Carol Elizabeth Tanner is a retired American physicist whose research involved high-precision measurements of the

hyperfine structure In atomic physics, hyperfine structure is defined by small shifts in otherwise degenerate electronic energy levels and the resulting splittings in those electronic energy levels of atoms, molecules, and ions, due to electromagnetic multipole int ...

of ultracold

cesium Caesium (IUPAC spelling; also spelled cesium in American English) is a chemical element; it has symbol Cs and atomic number 55. It is a soft, silvery-golden alkali metal with a melting point of , which makes it one of only five elemental metals ...

atoms in order to study parity non-conservation. She has also applied laser transmission spectroscopy to detect DNA and differentiate the DNA of different related species in samples. She is a

professor emerita ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac (known simply as Notre Dame; ; ND) is a Private university, private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, United States. Founded in 1842 by members of the Congregation of Holy Cross, a Cathol ...

Education and career

Tanner studied physics at the

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...

, graduating in 1980. She continued her studies in physics at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, where she received a master's degree in 1982 and completed her Ph.D. in 1985. Her doctoral work with Eugene D. Commins resulted in the dissertation ''Measurement of Stark Amplitudes in the

6\,^2_\to 7\,^2_

Transition of Atomic Thallium''. After postdoctoral research at the

University of Colorado The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, the University of Colorado Denver, and the U ...

and

National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into Outline of p ...

, she became an assistant professor at Notre Dame in 1990. She was promoted to associate professor in 1996 and full professor in 2006. She retired and became professor emerita in 2019.

Recognition

Tanner was named as a

Fellow of the American Physical Society The American Physical Society honors members with the designation ''Fellow'' for having made significant accomplishments to the field of physics. The following lists are divided chronologically by the year of designation. * List of fellows of the ...

(APS) in 2002, after a nomination from the APS Topical Group on Precision Measurement and Fundamental Constants, "for her contributions to the understanding of atomic structure through precision measurements of atomic lifetimes and transition amplitudes". Tanner's work on DNA detection won second place in the 2011 Nanotechnology New Ventures Competition.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tanner, Carol Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American physicists American women physicists University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni University of Notre Dame faculty Fellows of the American Physical Society