News and Events
Nobel physicists join those published by Cambridge
The three winners of this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics have all had work published by Cambridge University Press.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Prize to Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger, who have all conducted ground-breaking experiments using entangled quantum states, where two particles behave like a single unit even when they are separated - what happens to one determines what happens to the other.
Their experiments showed that this mysterious phenomenon was real and cleared the way for its application in new technology based upon quantum information, in areas including computing and the encryption of information.
Anders Irbäck, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said: “It has become increasingly clear that a new kind of quantum technology is emerging. We can see that the laureates’ work with entangled states is of great importance, even beyond the fundamental questions about the interpretation of quantum mechanics.”
Professor Aspect, who is affiliated to the Université Paris-Saclay and École Polytechnique, Palaiseau, is the joint author of two books published by Cambridge: Levy Statistics and Laser Cooling (2001) and Introduction to Quantum Optics (2010).
His fellow laureates have also seen work published in Cambridge titles. Professor Zeilinger, professor of physics emeritus at the University of Vienna, contributed chapters to Science and Ultimate Reality (2004) and The New Physics (2014), where he looked at quantum entanglement. John Clauser, who runs his own consulting company in California, contributed to a chapter in The Search for a Naturalistic World View (1993), in which he discusses Bell’s inequalities.
Phil Meyler, the Press’ Publishing Development Director (Scientific, Technical and Medical), said: “Our mission and that of our university is to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. The fact we have published work by all three winners of this year’s prize for physics shows that we are doing just that; helping to share the thoughts of the brightest scientific minds with people the world over.”
Nobel Prizes have been awarded since 1901 in recognition of an individual or group’s contributions to ‘the greatest benefit to mankind’ in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, Peace, and later Economic Sciences.
The Press has published the works of more than 170 Nobel Prize Laureates in our books, journals and the journals of our partners, including such names as Albert Einstein, Steven Weinberg, Douglass C. North, and Angus Deaton. Cambridge is also proud to have published the works of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
