Misplaced Pages

This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libelous. Find sources: "Daniel Kleppner" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (February 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Daniel Kleppner (born 1932) is an American physicist who is the Lester Wolfe Professor Emeritus of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and co-founder and co-director of the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms. His areas of science include atomic, molecular, and optical physics, and his research interests include experimental atomic physics, laser spectroscopy, and high precision measurements.

Together with Robert J. Kolenkow, he authored a popular textbook An Introduction to Mechanics for advanced students.

Biography

Parents

Kleppner's father was Otto Kleppner, founder of an advertising agency.

Education and career

Kleppner graduated from Williams College with a B.A. in 1953 in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He also attended Cambridge University in England with a B.A. in 1955, and Harvard University, he attended the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, with a Ph.D. in 1959.

In the 1950s, Kleppner became a physics doctoral student at Harvard University, where he worked under Norman Ramsey. Here, Kleppner took the concepts behind an ammonia maser and applied them to a hydrogen maser, which became his Ph.D. thesis. Kleppner did important research into Rydberg atoms.

Later he became interested in creating a hydrogen Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC). In 1995, a group of researchers, including Kleppner's former students, made a BEC using rubidium atoms. It was not until 1998 that Kleppner and Tom Greytak finally created a hydrogen BEC.

Honors and awards

Kleppner has been the recipient of many awards including

• 1991 Lilienfeld Prize,
• 1991 William F. Meggers Award,
• 1997 Oersted Medal,
• 2005 Wolf Prize in Physics,
• 2006 National Medal of Science
• 2007 Frederic Ives Medal,
• 2014 Benjamin Franklin Medal, and
• 2017 American Physical Society Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research.

Within MIT he won the institute's prestigious James R. Killian, Jr. Faculty Achievement Award, conferring him the title of Killian Award Lecturer for 1995-1996.

He was elected the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986, a Fellow of OSA in 1992, the French Academy of Sciences in 2004, and the American Philosophical Society in 2007.

Books

Kleppner and Robert J. Kolenkow wrote An Introduction to Mechanics in 1973. 40 years later, Kleppner and Kolenkow returned to edit and publish a second edition in 2013.

• Kleppner, Daniel; Robert J. Kolenkow (1973). An Introduction to Mechanics. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-035048-9.
• Kleppner, Daniel (2013). An Introduction to Mechanics (1st ed.). Cambridge. ISBN 9780511784118.
• Kleppner, Daniel (2013). An Introduction to Mechanics (2nd ed.). Cambridge. ISBN 9780521198110.

Kleppner and his thesis adviser (and Nobel laureate) Norman Ramsey wrote the text Quick Calculus, joined for the 3rd edition by MIT professor Peter Dourmashkin:

• Kleppner, Daniel; Ramsey, Norman (1972). Quick calculus: for self-study or classroom use (1st ed.). New York: Wiley. ISBN 9780471491125.
• Kleppner, Daniel; Ramsey, Norman (1985). Quick Calculus: a self-teaching guide (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Wiley. ISBN 0471827223.
• Kleppner, Daniel; Dourmashkin, Peter; Ramsey, Norman (8 April 2022). Quick Calculus: A Self-Teaching Guide (3rd ed.). Jossey-Bass. ISBN 978-1-119-74319-4.

Selected publications

• Thomas J. Greytak; Daniel Kleppner (2001). "Bose-Einstein Condensation". McGraw-Hill Yearbook of Science and Technology: 64–67.
• D. G. Fried; T. C. Killian; L. Willmann; D. Landhuis; S. C. Moss; D. Kleppner; T. J. Greytak (1998). "Bose-Einstein Condensation of Atomic Hydrogen". Physical Review Letters. 81 (18): 3811. arXiv:physics/9809017. Bibcode:1998PhRvL..81.3811F. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.81.3811. S2CID 3174641.
• T. C. Killian; D. G. Fried; L. Willmann; D. Landhuis; S. C. Moss; T. J. Greytak; D. Kleppner (1998). "Cold Collision Frequency Shift of the 1S-2S Transition in Hydrogen". Physical Review Letters. 81 (18): 3807. arXiv:physics/9809016. Bibcode:1998PhRvL..81.3807K. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.81.3807. S2CID 18665492.
• C. L. Cesar; D. G. Fried; T. C. Killian; A. D. Polcyn; J. C. Sandberg; I. A. Yu; T. J. Greytak; D. Kleppner (1996). "Two-Photon Spectroscopy of Trapped Atomic Hydrogen". Physical Review Letters. 77 (2): 255–258. Bibcode:1996PhRvL..77..255C. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.77.255. hdl:1721.1/11193. PMID 10062405.
• T. C. Killian; D. G. Fried; C. L. Cesar; A. D. Polycn; T. J. Greytak; D. Kleppner (1996). "Doppler-Free Spectroscopy of Trapped Atomic Hydrogen". Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Atomic Physics.

References

1. Julia Steinberger (2004). Progress towards high precision measurements on ultracold metastable hydrogen and trapping deuterium (PhD thesis). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. hdl:1721.1/28649. OCLC 655586822.
2. MIT Department of Physics
3. "13 BOOK Recommendations on SPECIAL RELATIVITY!!". YouTube. For the Love of Physics. May 25, 2022. review of An Introduction to Mechanics by Kleppner & Kolenkow, 4:08 to 6:46 in video
4. "Otto Kleppner". The New York Times. 1982-08-05. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2015-07-10.
5. Daniel Kleppner Archived 2008-12-02 at the Wayback Machine
6. Daniel Kleppner | MIT150 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology 150th anniversary Archived 2014-07-14 at the Wayback Machine
7. "Daniel Kleppner | The Franklin Institute". Archived from the original on 2014-08-13. Retrieved 2014-05-07.
8. "Daniel Kleppner » MIT Physics". MIT Physics. Retrieved 2024-07-12.
9. Kleppner awarded international Wolf Prize for physics | MIT News
10. "Daniel Kleppner". 2014 Franklin Institute Awards. Archived from the original on November 6, 2013. Retrieved November 6, 2013.
11. "2017 APS Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research". www.aps.org. September 21, 2016. Retrieved 9 July 2023.
12. "About | MIT Killian Lectures". killianlectures.mit.edu. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
13. "Kleppner to give Killian Lecture today". MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 13 March 1996. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
14. "Daniel Kleppner". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2021-08-25.
15. "Daniel Kleppner | Optica". www.optica.org. Retrieved 2024-07-12.
16. "Daniel Kleppner | Liste des membres de l'Académie des sciences / K | Listes par ordre alphabétique | Listes des membres | Membres | Nous connaître". www.academie-sciences.fr. Retrieved 2021-08-25.
17. "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2021-08-25.
18. "An Introduction to Mechanics | General and classical physics". Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 2022-06-03.
19. "An Introduction to Mechanics | General and classical physics". Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 2022-06-03.

External links

• Faculty page at MIT
• Interview with Daniel Kleppner (Video)
• "Views from the Garden of Worldly Delights - Daniel Kleppner". YouTube. James R. Killian, Jr. Lecture Series. December 4, 2015.

• 1932 births
• Living people
• Harvard University alumni
• 21st-century American physicists
• Williams College alumni
• American optical physicists
• Wolf Prize in Physics laureates
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty
• National Medal of Science laureates
• Members of the French Academy of Sciences
• Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
• Fellows of the American Physical Society
• Members of the American Philosophical Society
• Benjamin Franklin Medal (Franklin Institute) laureates