William Daniel Phillips

William Daniel Phillips, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate

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Born: November 5, 1948
Age in 2026: 78
Zodiac sign: Scorpio
Birth year: 1948

About William Daniel Phillips

William Daniel Phillips is an American physicist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 with Steven Chu and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji. Phillips has been awarded numerous honors. He and his wife have two daughters; Caitlin Phillips (born 1979) who founded Rebound Designs, and Christine Phillips (b 1981) who works in science communication. He was one of the 35 Nobel laureates who signed a letter urging President Obama to provide a stable $15 billion per year support for clean energy research, technology and demonstration.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when William Daniel Phillips was born

William Daniel Phillips was born in 1948. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1948

#1 song"Twelfth Street Rag" – Pee Wee Hunt
Top movieHamlet
Top TV showTexaco Star Theater (Milton Berle)
Best-selling bookThe Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer

Headlines and milestones

Major sports momentCleveland Indians win the World Series
Top headlineState of Israel declared
Technology milestoneLong-playing vinyl record (LP) introduced
Defining fadTelevision sets in homes
Notable inventionVelcro
World population2.50 billion

United States snapshot

U.S. leaderHarry S. Truman
Sports championCleveland Indians (World Series)
Also wonBaltimore Bullets (BAA)
U.S. population146.6M

1948 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in William Daniel Phillips's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure	1948	2026
Gas	$0.26	$3.45/gal
Average home	$8,300	$435,000
Average income	$5,000	$67,500
Minimum wage	$0.40	$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket	$0.40	$11.95
Postage stamp	$0.03	$0.73
Population	146.6M	341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.