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Www.Wired.Com - : Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-LedgerBell Labs' decision to abandon basic physics research marks the end of a brilliant chapter for the iconic institution. Many of the Labs' most famous discoveries, such as the transistor and the laser, originated in fundamental physics and have gone on to transform computing and technology.
They also brought Bell Labs international glory, including six Nobel Prizes in Physics, starting in 1937 when researcher Clinton Davisson shared the Nobel for demonstrating the wave nature of matter.
The lab will now focus on areas such as networking, high-speed electronics, wireless, nanotechnology and software -- fields that are likely to offer a more immediate payback for parent company Alcatel-Lucent.
As we say goodbye to one of the last bastions of basic research within the corporate world, we celebrate Bell Labs' greatest achievements in physics.
Left: Bell Labs' Holmdel, New Jersey-based facility was home to basic physics research. Designed by architect Eero Saarinen and built in 1962, the landmark building once housed 6,000 employees. It now stands empty and neglected. Alcatel-Lucent has sold the building to a developer who plans to transform the complex into a mixed-use residential, office and retail space.
: Photo: Bell Labs/Alcatel-LucentBell Labs' U.S. headquarters in Murray Hill, New Jersey, has been the site of many innovations and scientific breakthroughs, and that location continues to remain strong, says Alcatel-Lucent. But the company's Holmdel, New Jersey, campus, the site of basic physics research, has been sold. Holmdel's technological contributions include pioneering work on Telstar, the first communications satellite, and Steven Chu's Nobel Prize-winning research into methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.: Photo: Bettmann/CorbisIn 1927 Clinton Davisson (shown) and Lester Germer, two researchers at Bell Labs, demonstrated the wave nature of matter by firing slow-moving electrons at a crystalline nickel target. The experiment completed the proof of the hypothesis that all matter and energy has both wave-like and particle-like properties. The findings from Davisson's experiment became part of the foundation for much of solid-state electronics. Ten years later, Davisson shared the Nobel Prize for his research in electronic interference. : Photo: Bell LabsThe transistor was developed in 1947 as a replacement for bulky vacuum tubes and mechanical relays. The invention revolutionized the world of electronics and became the basic building block upon which all modern computer technology rests. In 1956, Bell Labs scientists William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for the transistor.
Shockley also founded Shockley Semiconductor in Mountain View, California -- one of the first high-tech companies in what would later become known as Silicon Valley.
: Photo: Bettmann/CorbisBell Labs scientist Philip Anderson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977 for developing an improved understanding of the electronic structure of glass and magnetic materials. His work opened the doors for the development of electronic switching and memory devices in computers. In 2006, based on a study carried out by José Soler, a statistical physicist at the University of Madrid, Anderson was called the most creative physicist in the world. Anderson retired from Bell Labs in 1984 is now a professor at Princeton University.
: Photo: NASAAccording to the Big Bang theory, the early universe was very hot; as it expanded, the gas within it cooled. The theory predicts that the universe should be filled with radiation -- the remnants of that primordial heat. But it took Bell Labs researchers to prove it. In 1965, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, working at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, discovered this "cosmic microwave background radiation." The radiation was acting as a source of excess noise in a radio receiver they were building. Penzias and Wilson shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery.
This photo shows the Horn antenna on which Penzias and Wilson discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation.
: Photo: H. M. Helfer/National Institute of Standards and TechnologyThe idea of using lasers to trap and cool molecules began as a lunch conversation at the Holmdel, New Jersey, campus of Bell Labs. Steven Chu, one of the researchers who later won the Nobel in Physics, had joined Bell Labs in 1978. "I was one of roughly two dozen brash, young scientists that were hired within a two-year period. We felt like the 'Chosen Ones,' with no obligation to do anything except the research we loved best. The joy and excitement of doing science permeated the halls," Chu says in his biography on the Nobel Prize site. Chu is now the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at University of California in Berkeley.
Left: A sample of cooled trapped sodium atoms.
: Image: Marcel FranzIn 1998, Bell Labs researchers Horst Stormer, Robert Laughlin (now at Stanford University) and Daniel Tsui (now at Princeton University) bagged the Nobel in Physics for their discovery and explanation of the fractional quantum Hall effect. The trio found that electrons acting together in strong magnetic fields can form new types of particles, called quasiparticles, that have charges that are mere fractions of the charge carried by a single electron.
This image shows electrons that have been scattered and scanned, showing interference patterns created by quasiparticles.
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