Philip H. Bucksbaum

Philip H. Bucksbaum
At Stanford 2009
Born	(1953-01-14) January 14, 1953 (age 64) Grinnell, Iowa
Citizenship	USA
Alma mater	Harvard University, A.B. 1975 University of California at Berkeley, Ph.D. 1980
Scientific career
Fields	Atomic Physics, Ultrafast Science
Institutions	Stanford University, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Thesis	Measurement of the Parity Non-conserving Neutral Weak Interaction in Atomic Thallium (1980)
Doctoral advisor	Eugene Commins

Harvard University, A.B. 1975

Philip H. Bucksbaum (born January 14, 1953 in Grinnell, Iowa) is an American atomic physicist, the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science in the Departments of Physics, Applied Physics, and Photon Science at Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. He also directs the Stanford PULSE Institute. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the Optical Society, and has been elected President of the Optical Society for 2014. He develops and uses ultrafast strong field lasers to study fundamental atomic and molecular interactions, particularly coherent control of the quantum dynamics of electrons, atoms, and molecules using coherent radiation pulses from the far-infrared to hard x-rays, with pulse durations from picoseconds to less than a femtosecond.

Bucksbaum spent his early childhood in Grinnell, a small farming and college community in south-central Iowa. He graduated as the class valedictorian from Washington High School in Cedar Rapids in 1971. He received a bachelor's degree in Physics from Harvard College in 1975. Bucksbaum attended graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley, receiving his Ph.D. in 1980.