Gabriel Aeppli (born 25 November 1956) is a Swiss-American electrical engineer, co-founder of the

London Centre for Nanotechnology The London Centre for Nanotechnology is a multidisciplinary research centre in physical and biomedical nanotechnology in London, United Kingdom. It brings together three institutions that are referents in nanotechnology, University College Lond ...

, professor of physics at ETH Zürich and EPF Lausanne, and head of the Synchrotron and Nanotechnology department of the Paul Scherrer Institute, also in Switzerland. He has contributed to spectroscopy on the magnetism of disordered systems and on high-temperature superconductors and

antiferromagnetism In materials that exhibit antiferromagnetism, the magnetic moments of atoms or molecules, usually related to the spins of electrons, align in a regular pattern with neighboring spins (on different sublattices) pointing in opposite directions. ...

, identifying magnets with tuneable quantum fluctuations that can be used to study the transition between classical and quantum behavior. His work has helped to demonstrate that quantum spin fluctuations underlie exotic superconductivity. He has been the recipient of multiple honors, and he has more than 290

peer-review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...

publications, 14,054 total citations from 9,542 documents, and a

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with success indicators such as winning t ...

of 70.

Life

Gabriel, the son of mathematician Alfred Aeppli and Dorothee Aeppli, was born in

Zürich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

25 November 1956. Shortly after birth, Gabriel Aeppli moved from

with his father to the United States. He lived in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, United Kingdom, from 2002 to 2015, when he moved back to

Career

He studied at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

, where he obtained a B.Sc. in 1978 in mathematics and PhD, M.Sc. & B.Sc, in electrical engineering (1983). He was a research assistant at MIT and an industrial co-op student at IBM. From 1982 he was at the Bell Laboratories hired in 1993 as a distinguished member of the technical staff. From 1996 to 2002, he was a senior research scientist at the NEC Laboratories in Princeton. From 2002, as

Quain Professor Quain Professor is the professorship title for certain disciplines at University College London, England. The title honours Richard Quain, who became Professor of Anatomy in 1832 at what would become University College, London. Quain left a legacy ...

of Physics at University College London (UCL), he helped to found the

, where he acted as director until March 2015. His current technical focus is on the implications of photon science and nanotechnology for information processing and health care. He is a board member of Bio Nano Consulting. Currently, he is the director of synchrotron radiation and nanotechnology at the Paul Scherrer Institute.

Research

Kondo insulator In solid-state physics, Kondo insulators (also referred as Kondo semiconductors and heavy fermion semiconductors) are understood as materials with strongly correlated electrons, that open up a narrow band gap (in the order of 10 meV) at low temp ...

Scale-free network A scale-free network is a network whose degree distribution follows a power law, at least asymptotically. That is, the fraction ''P''(''k'') of nodes in the network having ''k'' connections to other nodes goes for large values of ''k'' as : P( ...

Honors

* 2015 Fellow

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

* 2012 Member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

* 2010

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

* 2008 Institute of Physics: Mott Medal and Prize * 2005 American Physical Society:

Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize The Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize is an annual award given by the American Physical Society "to recognize and encourage outstanding theoretical or experimental contributions to condensed matter physics." It was endowed by AT&T Bell Labor ...

* 2005 Majumdar Memorial Award of the

Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS) is a public, deemed, research university for higher education and research in basic sciences under the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India. Established on 29 July ...

* 2003 Neel Medal (magnetism prize of

IUPAP The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP; ) is an international non-governmental organization whose mission is to assist in the worldwide development of physics, to foster international cooperation in physics, and to help in the ...

) * 2002 Riso National Laboratory Fellow * 2002 Royal Society

Wolfson Research Merit Award The Royal Society Wolfson Fellowship, known as the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award until 2020, is a 5 years fellowship awarded by the Royal Society since 2000. The scheme is described by the Royal Society as providing ''long-term flexib ...

* 1997 Fellow of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of ...

* 1996 Fellow of the

Japan Society for the Promotion of Science The is an Independent Administrative Institution in Japan, established for the purpose of contributing to the advancement of science in all fields of the natural and social sciences and the humanities.JSPSweb page History The Japan Society f ...

In addition, he has been a member and chairman of many panels, sponsored by the USDOE, American Physical Society, EPSRC, and National Research Council (US), among others.

Books

* "Neutron Scattering from Random Ferromagnets", Gabriel Aeppli, 1982 - 310 pages * "Quantum Phase Transitions in Transverse Field Models", Amit Dutta, Gabriel Aeppli, Bikas K. Chakrabarti, Uma Divakaran, Thomas F. Rosenbaum, Diptiman Sen, Cambridge University Press, 28 Jan 2015 - Science - 360 pages

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Aeppli, Gabriel 1956 births Living people Scientists from Zurich MIT School of Engineering alumni 21st-century American physicists Fellows of the Royal Society Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences NEC people American quantum information scientists Fellows of the American Physical Society Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize winners