Distinguished theoretical physicist and senior Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellow Hans Frauenfelder has been named one of three 2007 Willis E. Lamb Award winners for Laser Science and Quantum Optics at the 37th Physics of Quantum Electronics (PQE) Conference.
"I was very happy when I learned that I would receive this award, said Frauenfelder. "I was particularly delighted that the award was given for my work in biological physics - a new field that still needs more recognition and will be of tremendous value for the Laboratory."
A leader in physics research for more than half a century Frauenfelder accepted the tribute for his "pioneering contributions to radiation biophysics" during PQE's Winter Colloquium in Snowbird, Utah. Dubbed as a forerunner of biological physics, Frauenfelder uses lasers and quantum physics to study biological systems to learn how proteins act as dynamic entities with motions that can be characterized by physical experiments.
His work in this area has helped invalidate the long-held belief that proteins - essential building blocks of biological systems that do nearly all the work in living systems - were rigid, crystal-like, systems with a unique structure.
Frauenfelder and his colleagues discovered that any given protein can assume a large number of somewhat different structures, and fluctuate continually among these structures. These findings led Frauenfelder to the notion of an energy landscape in proteins - a concept that permits a description of protein functions in quantitative terms as it changes shape, structure, and function. According to Frauenfelder, the future of biological research-especially in the areas of biothreat and biomaterials- will be to a large extent based on this energy landscape.
In 1992, Frauenfelder came to Los Alamos after 40 years as a professor and researcher at the University of Illinois. He initially worked for in the Laboratory's physics division on the development of the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) and later served as the director for the Center for Nonlinear Studies. He was named a Laboratory Senior Fellow in 2003.
Frauenfelder received his doctorate and undergraduate degrees in physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences - the entity responsible for determining Nobel Prize science winners.
The Lamb award, established by the PQE Conference in 1998, is named after Willis E. Lamb, Jr. - renowned laser scientist and 1955 winner of the Nobel Prize in physics.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, The Babcock & Wilcox Company, and Washington Group International for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.
Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.