About Steven Chu
Steven Chu (Chinese: 朱棣文; born February 28, 1948) is an American physicist and former government official. He is a Nobel laureate and was the 12th U.S. secretary of energy. He is currently the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University. He is known for his research at the University of California, Berkeley, and his research at Bell Laboratories and Stanford University regarding the cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, for which he shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Daniel Phillips. Chu served as U.S. Secretary of Energy under the Barack Obama administration from 2009 to 2013. At the time of his appointment as Energy Secretary, Chu was a professor of physics and molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where his research was concerned primarily with the study of biological systems at the single molecule level. Chu resigned as energy secretary on April 22, 2013. He returned to Stanford as Professor of Physics, Molecular & Cellular Physiology, and Energy Science and Engineering. Chu is a vocal advocate for more research into renewable energy and nuclear power, arguing that a shift away from fossil fuels is essential to combating climate change. He has conceived of a global "glucose economy", a form of a low-carbon economy, in which glucose from tropical plants is shipped around like oil is today. Chu served a one-year term as President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science starting from February 22, 2019. Steven Chu was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 for the "development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light", together with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Daniel Phillips. He was also awarded the Humboldt Prize by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 1995. Diablo Magazine awarded him an Eco Award in its April 2009 issue, shortly after he was nominated for Energy Secretary. Louis and Harvard University awarded him honorary doctorates during their 2010 and 2009 commencement exercises, respectively.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.