Dr. William E. Moerner, 2014 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Dr. William D. Philips, Nobel Laureate in Physics (1997) and Dr. Yuan T. Lee, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (1986) all lectured at the Symposium on Atomic and Molecular Sciences was held by the Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences on November 11, 2014.

“This is an unsual line up of three of the world’s top scientists, and feast of scientific excellence not to be missed,” said Dr. Mei-Yin Chou, Director of the Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences, and convener of the event. 

Dr. Moerner kicked off the day with a lecture entitled “Dual Roles for Single Molecules: Light Sources for 3D Nanoscopy and Reporters of Multivariate Dynamics in Solution”. In the afternoon, Dr. Yuan T. Lee, President Emeritus of Academia Sinica, delivered a lecture entitled “The Sustainable Transformation of Human Society”. This was followed by a lecture entitled “Cold Atom Research at the Joint Quantum Institute” by Dr. Philips, later in the day.

Including the laureates, eight international renowned authorities in Atomic and Molecular Sciences gave lectures throughout the day.

Dr. Moerner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on December 10, 2014, “for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy” along with Dr. Eric Betzig and Dr. Stefan W. Hell. Dr. Moerner is the Harry S. Mosher Professor in Chemistry and Professor, Department of Chemistry, Stanford University. His research interests include physical chemistry, chemical physics, single-molecule biophysics, super-resolution imaging, nanoparticle trapping.

Dr. Philips was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 “for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light” along with Dr. Steven Chu and Dr. Claude Cohen-Tannoudji. Dr. Philips is a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA. Dr. Philips research interests include laser cooling and trapping of neutral atoms, atomic-gas Bose-Einstein condenstates, and quantum information with single-atom qubits.

Dr. Yuan T. Lee was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1986 who, “for their contributions to the dynamics of chemical elementary processes” along with the John C. Polanyi and American Dudley R. Herschbach. He served as President of Academia Sinica from 1994-2006, and as President of the International Council for Science from 2011-2014. In recent years, Dr. Lee has turned his focus towards sustainability science, stating that global warming will be much more serious that scientists previously thought, and working towards sustainability in Taiwan and throughout the world.