Theodor Wolfgang Hansch

He designed the first highly monochromatic, widely tunable dye laser in 1970 and pioneered many of the now commonly used methods of Doppler-free laser spectroscopy, motivated by precision spectroscopy of the simple hydrogen atom, which provides precise values of fundamental constants and permits unique confrontations between experiment and quantum electrodynamic theory. Recently, he has developed new methods for measuring the frequency of light. In 1974, jointly with Arthur Shawlow, he made the first proposal for laser cooling of atomic gases. In 1992, he and his Munich team were the first to realize 2- and 3-dimensional atomic lattices bound by light. In 1998, his group has realized the first continuous source of cohenrent matter waves, an atom laser with cw output coupler.