The first 2019 Vladilen Letokhov Medal, jointly presented by the European Physical Society and the Russian Academy of Sciences is awarded to
- Prof. Dr. Ferenc Krausz, Director of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) and Chair for Experimental Physics Laser Physics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich.
The prize is awarded to Prof. Krausz “for his contribution to the development of high-field laser physics, in particular for pioneering attosecond physics, through which real-time views of electron motion in atoms, molecules, and solids have become possible”.
Ferenc Krausz studied Electrical Engineering and Physics in Budapest, received his Ph.D. and Habilitation in laser physics at the Vienna University of Technology (VUT) in 1991 and 1993, respectively, where he became full professor in 1999. In Vienna, he and his co-workers were able, for the first time, to generate and measure light pulses of attosecond duration. Since 2004, he has been director at MPQ and chair of experimental physics – laser physics – at LMU Munich, in Garching, Germany. He also founded the Centre for Advanced Laser Applications (CALA) in Garching, which he leads as director. With his seminal advancements in few-cycle laser technology, Ferenc Krausz and his team have pioneered the generation and application of ultrashort, intense optical light pulses with tailored waveform. These permit to reproducibly generate isolated attosecond pulses, and – together with them – to probe electron motion in atoms, molecules, and solids on their natural, attosecond-femtosecond timescale. Among the exciting applications of his work is the possibility to implement light-wave driven electronics for scaling ultrafast information processing to the petahertz regime. Furthermore, Ferenc Krausz and his team made seminal contributions to the development of high-peak and high-average power ultrafast laser systems with tailored light fields. These enable the generation of well-controlled high-energy photons, electrons and ions for novel applications in cancer medicine. His most recent efforts focus on evaluating the potential of infrared molecular fingerprinting of blood for early cancer detection.
Ferenc Krausz is a highly-cited scientist and has been named as Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate (Thomson Reuters, 2015). He has been awarded numerous honours and is a member of a variety of national and international scientific associations, such as OSA, the German National Academy, Leopoldina, and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
More info about the Vladilen Letokhov Medal on the EPS QEOD website
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