Biography:Margaret Murnane
| Margaret M. Murnane
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|---|---|
| Born | Template:Birth date County Limerick, Ireland
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| Known for | Founder of the field of ultrafast x-ray science KMLabs Co-founder |
Margaret Mary Murnane (born 23 January 1959) is an Irish physicist, who served as a distinguished professor of physics at the University of Colorado Boulder, having moved there in 1999, with past positions at the University of Michigan and Washington State University. She is the director of the STROBE NSF Science and Technology Center and a researcher in laser science and technology.
Her interests and research contributions span topics including atomic, molecular, and optical physics, nanoscience, laser technology, materials and chemical dynamics, plasma physics, and imaging science. Her work has earned her awards[1][2][3] including the MacArthur Fellowship award in 2000, the Frederic Ives Medal/Quinn Prize in 2017, the highest award of The Optical Society, and the 2021 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics.
Early life
Born and raised in County Limerick, Ireland, Murnane became interested in physics through her father who was a primary school teacher. She received her B.A. and M.S. from University College, Cork.[4] She moved to the United States to study at the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned her PhD in 1989 under Roger Falcone.[5] She is married to Henry Kapteyn. They work together and operate their own lab at JILA at the University of Colorado.[6]
Career
Murnane has co-authored more than 500 articles in peer reviewed journals, with her work receiving around 35000 citations.[7] She is a founder of the field of ultrafast X-ray science, having made contributions to this area of research in every decade since the 1980s. She has developed her university-based laboratory effort in collaboration with Kapteyn.[8]
In their lab, Murnane, Kapteyn, and their students make lasers whose beams flash like a strobe light – except that each flash is a trillion times faster. These lasers, like camera flashes, make it possible to record the motions of atoms in chemical reactions, and of atoms and electrons in materials systems. Some of her lasers can generate pulses of less than 10 femtoseconds.[9]The very high peak power of these ultrashort laser pulses makes it possible to coherently upconvert light to much shorter wavelengths, in the extreme ultraviolet and soft X-ray region of the spectrum. This high harmonic generation process makes possible a tabletop-scale X-ray laser light source.
Murnane explored the use of femtosecond lasers for x-ray generation and has made substantive contributions to many aspects of this area of research, including the understanding of the high harmonic process, the laser technology required to use this process to implement practical tabletop light sources for applications, and in applying this new source to make fundamental discoveries in areas ranging from basic atomic and chemical dynamics to materials dynamics, to nanoimaging. She is also a founder of the area now known as experimental "Attosecond Science", having performed experiments that demonstrated the ability to manipulate electron dynamics with attosecond precision.[10] [11] She is the co-founder of the laser company KMLabs, Inc.,[12] for which Intel Capital is a co-investor.[13]
Honours
- 1998 Fellow of The Optical Society[14]
- 2000 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellow[15]
- 2001 Fellow of the American Physical Society[16]
- 2003 Richtmyer Memorial Award Lecturer of the American Association of Physics Teachers
- 2003 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science[16]
- 2004 Member of the National Academy of Sciences[16]
- 2006 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences[17]
- 2007 Fellow of the Association for Women in Science[18]
- 2010 Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science[19]
- 2010 R. W. Wood Prize, The Optical Society[20]
- 2011 Boyle Medal[21]
- 2012 Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics[22]
- 2015 Honorary doctorate from Trinity College Dublin[23]
- 2015 Member of the American Philosophical Society[24]
- 2016 honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Science and Technology at Uppsala University, Sweden[25]
- 2017 Frederic Ives Medal/Quinn Prize in optics from The Optical Society[26]
- 2021 Benjamin Franklin Medal (Franklin Institute) in Physics[27] (shared with Henry Kapteyn)
- 2022 Isaac Newton Medal, from Institute of Physics[28]
- 2023 honorary doctorate from the University of Salamanca, Spain[29]
Publications
- Popmintchev, T.; Chen, M. C.; Popmintchev, D.; Arpin, P.; Brown, S.; Ališauskas, S.; Andriukaitis, G.; Balčiūnas, T. et al. (2012). "Bright coherent ultrahigh harmonics in the keV x-ray regime from mid-infrared femtosecond lasers". Science 336 (6086): 1287–1291. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1218497. Retrieved February 19, 2026.
- Rundquist, A.; Durfee III, C. G.; Chang, Z.; Herne, C.; Backus, S.; Murnane, M. M.; Kapteyn, H. C. (1998). "Phase-matched generation of coherent soft X-rays". Science 280 (5368): 1412–1415. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.280.5368.1412. Retrieved February 19, 2026.
- Chang, Z.; Rundquist, A.; Wang, H.; Murnane, M. M.; Kapteyn, H. C. (1997). "Generation of coherent soft X rays at 2.7 nm using high harmonics". Physical Review Letters 79 (16): 2967–2970. https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.79.2967. Retrieved February 19, 2026.
References
- ↑ "Murnane, Margaret M.". National Academy of Sciences. https://www.nasonline.org/directory-entry/margaret-m-murnane-lsbbbu. Retrieved 17 February 2026.
- ↑ "1990 Marshall N. Rosenbluth Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award Recipient". American Physical Society. https://www.aps.org/funding-recognition/winners?q=murnane&af=false. Retrieved 17 February 2026.
- ↑ "1997 Maria Goeppert Mayer Award Recipient". American Physical Society. https://www.aps.org/funding-recognition/winners?q=murnane&af=false. Retrieved 17 February 2026.
- ↑ "1997 Maria Goeppert Mayer Award Recipient". American Physical Society. https://www.aps.org/funding-recognition/winners?q=murnane&af=false.
- ↑ Fiez, Terry (18 March 2021). "Margaret Murnane". American Institute of Physics. https://www.colorado.edu/researchinnovation/2021/03/18/buff-innovator-insights-podcast-dr-margaret-murnane-jila-physics-strobe. "Interview with Margaret Murnane (professor of physics at University of Colorado Boulder, JILA fellow, NSF STROBE director."
- ↑ Davis, T. H. (2006). "Profile of Margaret M. Murnane". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103 (36): 13276–13278.
- ↑ "Margaret Murnane Google Scholar profile". University of Colorado at Boulder. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=fbL5uSAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao. Retrieved 1 October 2018.
- ↑ "About the Kapteyn-Murnane Group". University of Colorado Boulder & NIST. https://jila.colorado.edu/kmgroup. "Describes joint research in ultrafast coherent EUV and X-ray beams, quantum materials, etc."
- ↑ "Laser pioneer Margaret Murnane bags 2022 Isaac Newton Medal and Prize". 25 October 2022. https://physicsworld.com/a/laser-pioneer-margaret-murnane-bags-2022-isaac-newton-medal-and-prize. "Murnane and colleagues created a titanium-doped sapphire laser generating pulses lasting less than 10 femtoseconds."
- ↑ Chang, Z.; Rundquist, A.; Wang, H.; Christov, I.; Kapteyn, H. C.; Murnane, M. M. (1998). "Temporal phase control of soft-x-ray harmonic emission". Physical Review A 58 (1): R30–R33. https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.58.R30.
- ↑ Bartels, R. et al. (2000). "Shaped-pulse optimization of coherent emission of high-harmonic soft X-rays". Nature 406 (6792): 164–166.
- ↑ "Founders and Leadership Team". KMLABS. https://www.kmlabs.com/founders-leadership-team.
- ↑ "Intel backs KMLabs' ultrafast laser development". http://optics.org/news/6/11/8.
- ↑ "Margaret M. Murnane". Optica. https://www.optica.org/history/biographies/bios/margaret_m_murnane. "Fellow - 1998"
- ↑ "Margaret Murnane". MacArthur Foundation. https://www.macfound.org/fellows/class-of-2000/margaret-murnane.
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 "Murnane". JILA, University of Colorado Boulder. https://jila.colorado.edu/kmgroup/people/murnane.
- ↑ "Margaret Mary Murnane". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. https://www.amacad.org/person/margaret-mary-murnane. "Elected 2006. Specialty: Physics. Professor of Physics; Fellow, JILA."
- ↑ "CU Professor Margaret Murnane Honored By National Women's Science Organization". University of Colorado at Boulder. http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2007/103.html.
- ↑ Talbott, Clint (February 12, 2010). "Ultra-fast laser research wins top prize" (in en). https://www.colorado.edu/asmagazine-archive/node/404.
- ↑ "R. W. Wood Prize". https://www.optica.org/en-us/awards_and_grants/awards/award_description/rwwood/.
- ↑ Boyle Medal Laureates Royal Dublin Society
- ↑ "The 2012 Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics: Margaret M. Murnane". The Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics. https://www.lambaward.org/2012/2012-murnane.html.
- ↑ "Registrar : Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin, Ireland". https://www.tcd.ie/registrar/honorary-degrees/2014-15/.
- ↑ "Murnane elected to American Philosophical Society". 28 May 2015. https://connections.cu.edu/people/murnane-elected-american-philosophical-society.
- ↑ "Three new honorary doctorates in Science and Technology – Uppsala University, Sweden". http://www.uu.se/en/research/grants-awards/article/?id=5398&area=2,5,12,16&typ=artikel&lang=en.
- ↑ "Professor Margaret Murnane Wins Highest Medal from The Optical Society" (in en). Physics. 2017-02-20. https://www.colorado.edu/physics/2017/02/20/professor-margaret-murnane-wins-highest-medal-optical-society.
- ↑ "Margaret M. Murnane". 25 January 2020. https://www.fi.edu/laureates/margaret-murnane.
- ↑ Banks, Michael (25 October 2022). "Laser pioneer Margaret Murnane bags 2022 Isaac Newton Medal and Prize". Physics world. IOP. https://physicsworld.com/laser-pioneer-margaret-murnane-bags-2022-isaac-newton-medal-and-prize/.
- ↑ "Margaret Murnane and Antonio Colinas new Doctors Honoris Causa from USAL" (in en-GB). June 22, 2023. https://laser.usal.es/alf/en/2023/06/22/margaret-murnane-and-antonio-colinas-new-doctors-honoris-causa-from-usal/.
Category:1959 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of University College Cork Category:Benjamin Franklin Medal (Franklin Institute) laureates Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Category:Fellows of the American Physical Society Category:Fellows of Optica (society) Category:Irish women physicists Category:MacArthur Fellows Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Category:Scientists from County Limerick Category:Sloan Research Fellows Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:University of Colorado Boulder faculty Category:University of Michigan faculty Category:20th-century Irish physicists Category:21st-century Irish physicists Category:20th-century women physicists