Nobel Physics Prize 2005

The physics Nobel prize has been announced. This years winners are John Hall (University of Colorado), Theodor Hansch (MaxPlanck Institute in Garching) and Roy Glauber (Harvard). The first two for experimental work in high precision laser spectroscopy and the later for theoretical work in quantum optics. Sweet! I note with some delight that Ted Hansch’s research group currently oversees work which is strongly motivated by the question to build quantum information processing devices. Which reminds me of something I like to say to my experimental friends in quantum information science: “First one to a quantum computer gets a Nobel prize!”