Henry C. Kapteyn

Dr. Henry C. Kapteyn has been a Professor at the Department of Physics and a Fellow of JILA, at the University of Colorado since 1999. Previously, he was an Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) Department at the University of Michigan, and an Assistant and then Associate Professor of Physics at Washington State University. Kapteyn's research focuses on the ability to capture and manipulate matter at the smallest time and length scales, demonstrating real-world applications in materials science, nanoscience and nanotechnology. He was the first to clearly identify the physics that limited the pulse duration of femtosecond lasers, demonstrating the first laser to generate <10fs light pulses. This advance sparked a revolution in ultrafast science in lasers. More recently, Kapteyn has produced ultrafast coherent x-ray beams from tabletop lasers. This advance realized a coherent version of the Rontgen x-ray tube in the soft x-ray region. He was awarded the Optical Society of America's Adolph Lomb Medal in 1993.