By the fourth grade, I graduated to an erector set and spent many happy hours constructing devices of unknown purpose where the main design criterion was to maximize the number of moving parts and overall size.

“The report. Chu is known for his research at Bell Labs in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 along with his scientific colleagues Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Daniel Phillips. Career and research

After obtaining his doctorate Chu remained at Berkeley as a postdoctoral researcher for two years before joining Bell Labs where he and his several co-workers carried out his Nobel Prize-winning laser cooling work.

He is a vocal advocate for more research into renewable energy and nuclear power arguing that a shift away from fossil fuels is essential to combating climate change. Chu is known for his research at Bell Labs in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 along with his scientific colleagues Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Daniel Phillips. Steven Chu (Chinese: 朱棣文; pinyin: Zhū Dìwén born February 28 1948) is an American physicist who became the 12th United States Secretary of Energy in 2009.