Horst Ludwig Störmer (; born April 6, 1949) is a German physicist, Nobel laureate and

emeritus professor ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

.Home page at Columbia
/ref> He was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Daniel Tsui and

Robert Laughlin Robert Betts Laughlin (born November 1, 1950) is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University. Along with Horst L. Störmer of Columbia University and Daniel C. Tsui of Princeton Universi ...

"for their discovery of a new form of

quantum fluid A quantum fluid refers to any system that exhibits quantum mechanical effects at the macroscopic level such as superfluids, superconductors, ultracold atoms, etc. Typically, quantum fluids arise in situations where both quantum mechanical effects ...

with fractionally charged excitations" (the

fractional quantum Hall effect The fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) is a physical phenomenon in which the Hall conductance of 2-dimensional (2D) electrons shows precisely quantized plateaus at fractional values of e^2/h. It is a property of a collective state in which elec ...

). He and Tsui were working at

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial Research and development, research and scientific developm ...

at the time of the experiment cited by the Nobel committee.

Biography

Störmer was born in

Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

, and grew up in the nearby town of Sprendlingen. After graduating from the Goetheschule in

Neu-Isenburg Neu-Isenburg is a town in Germany, located in the Offenbach district of Hesse. It is part of the Frankfurt Rhein-Main urban area and has a population of 38,204 (2020). The town is known nowadays mainly for its regionally used shopping centre, th ...

in 1967, he enrolled in architectural engineering at the TH Darmstadt, but later moved to the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt to study physics, but since he had missed the registration period for physics, he began with a mathematics and later changed to physics, qualifying for his Diploma in the laboratory of Prof. Werner Martienssen. Here he was supervised by Prof. Eckhardt Hoenig, and worked alongside another future Nobel laureate, Gerd Binnig. Störmer moved to France to carry out his PhD research in Grenoble, working in a high-magnetic field laboratory which was run jointly between the French CNRS and the German Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research. Störmer's academic advisor was Prof. Hans-Joachim Queisser, and he was awarded a PhD by the University of Stuttgart in 1977 for his thesis on investigations of electron hole droplets subject to high magnetic fields. He also met his wife, Dominique Parchet, while working in Grenoble. They divorced each other a few years later. After receiving his PhD, Störmer moved to the US to work at

, where he carried out the research that led to his Nobel prize. After working at Bell Labs for 20 years, he became the

I.I. Rabi Isidor Isaac Rabi (; born Israel Isaac Rabi, July 29, 1898 – January 11, 1988) was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944 for his discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance, which is used in magnetic resonance ima ...

professor of

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

and

applied physics Applied physics is the application of physics to solve scientific or engineering problems. It is usually considered to be a bridge or a connection between physics and engineering. "Applied" is distinguished from "pure" by a subtle combination ...

in New York City. He was elected to the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

in 2006. He retired as professor emeritus in 2011. Störmer is a naturalized US citizen.

Research career

Perhaps as important as the work for which he won the Nobel prize is his invention of modulation doping, a method for making extremely high mobility two dimensional electron systems in semiconductors. This enabled the later observation of the

, which was discovered by Störmer and Tsui in October 1981 in an experiment carried out in the Francis Bitter High Magnetic Field Lab at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. Within a year of the experimental discovery,

was able to explain its results. Störmer, Tsui and Laughlin were jointly awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work.Nobel Prize press release
/ref>

References

External links

Honeywell - Nobel Interactive Studio
* including the Nobel Lecture, December 8, 1998 ''The Fractional Quantum Hall Effect''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stormer, Horst Ludwig 1949 births Living people Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences 20th-century German physicists Columbia University faculty Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Science faculty Nobel laureates in Physics Scientists at Bell Labs German Nobel laureates Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize winners Goethe University Frankfurt alumni 21st-century American physicists American Nobel laureates People with acquired American citizenship Knights Commander of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Technische Universität Darmstadt alumni Fellows of the American Physical Society Members of the American Philosophical Society Scientists from Frankfurt