John L. Hall

John L. Hall was born and raised in Denver, CO. In 1961 he earned the Ph.D. degree in physics from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, PA. From 1962, he has been with JILA (formerly called the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics), Boulder, CO, operated by the University of Colorado, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). At JILA, he has been responsible for a number of major innovations and developments in laser frequency stabilization, high-resolution and ultrasensitive laser spectroscopy, laser cooling, quantum optics, and high-precision measurements using laser technology.

Dr Hall has pioneered the use of stabilized lasers to accomplish measurements of unprecedented accuracy and intrinsic physical interest. He introduced the methane/HeNe stabilized laser and, with his NBS team, used it to measure accurately the speed of light, allowing a re-definition of the SI Meter.

His group has stabilized various tunable lasers (including cost-effective diode lasers) to Hz, even sub-Hz linewidths. He showed how noise of even multi-km lengths of fiber could be actively suppressed to deliver phase-stable light at a remote site. His group pioneered the “Optical Comb” techniques which allow simple and direct measurement of optical frequencies.

For these works he was awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Prof.Hänsch of Munich and Prof.Glauber of Harvard.

He has received numerous other peer-generated awards, has more than 230 refereed publications, and holds 11 US patents.

After retiring from NIST in 2004 he has been CTO of Hall Stable Lasers LLC, a busy laser technology consulting company and, with his wife’s enterprise Sci-Teks Discovery Program for Kids, LLC, is a volunteer bringing experience with the tools and toys of science into the primary schools.