Wojciech H. Zurek named Phi Beta Kappa visiting scholar

Contact: Hildi Kelsey, hkelsey@lanl.gov, (505) 665-8040 (05-010)

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LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Feb. 16, 2005 -- Physicist Wojciech H. Zurek of Los Alamos National Laboratory's Theoretical Division was named a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar for 2004-05. Established in 1776, Phi Beta Kappa is the nation's oldest and largest academic honor society. Its Visiting Scholar Program serves to enrich the intellectual atmosphere at participating institutions.

"I am delighted with the award, excited about the prospect of interacting with the students and faculty and honored join the distinguished company of the other Phi Beta Kappa scholars," said Zurek.

Phi Beta Kappa scholars are a select group: Steven Chu, recently appointed director of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and 1997 Nobel Prize winner is the only other physicist this year. Visiting scholars spend two days per campus meeting with students, participating in classroom lectures, and addressing the academic community at up to eight universities and colleges with Phi Beta Kappa chapters. Specific topics selected for discussion by Zurek include Probabilities in Physics: From Quantum Entanglement to Classical Ignorance and Randomness and Maxwell's Demon.

Zurek joined Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1984 as a J. Robert Oppenheimer Fellow and led the Theoretical Astrophysics Group from 1991 to 1996. In 1996, he was named a Laboratory Fellow. Along with his groundbreaking work in quantum mechanics (he is well known for developing theory of decoherence and for the "no-cloning theorem"), his research interests extend to physics of information, astrophysics, cosmology and quantum computation.

In 1979, Zurek earned a doctorate in physics from the University of Texas in Austin - he will return there in February as Visiting Scholar - and received his master's degree in physics from Stanislaw Staszic Technical University in Krakow, Poland in 1974.

In addition to writing nearly 200 scientific papers, Zurek edited influential volumes Complexity, Entropy, and Physics of Information, and (with John Archibald Wheeler) Quantum Theory and Measurement.

Along with his new role as Visiting Scholar, Zurek is a foreign associate of the Cosmology Program of the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research. He was a member of the external faculty of Santa Fe Institute, where he has founded the Complexity, Entropy and Physics of Information network. Recently, Zurek co-organized and directed the Quantum Coherence and Decoherence Program as well as the Quantum Computing and Chaos Program at the University of California's (Santa Barbara) Institute for Theoretical Physics, and Complexity, Computation and Physics of Information Program at the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge.

Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by the University of California for the National Nuclear Security Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy and works in partnership with NNSA's Sandia and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories to support NNSA in its mission.

Los Alamos enhances global security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, developing technical solutions to reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health and national security concerns.

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