World Scientific Newsletter March 2009(English Version) Page 1

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World Scientific's Advisor & Author

Prof Steven Chu

Appointed as U.S. Energy Secretary

It came as a landmark news to World Scientific when Steven Chu, a prominent Chinese American scientist, was nominated on December 10, 2008 by the then US President-elect Barack Obama as the next Energy Secretary.

In fact, Professor Steven Chu shares a long-standing relationship with World Scientific. Prof Chu, 1997 Nobel Laureate in Physics, collaborated with World Scientific in 2001/2002 on the Proceedings of the XV International Conference on Laser Spectroscopy. His first visit to Singapore was at the invitation of World Scientific Publishing in December 1998 for the launch of the inaugural World Scientific Nobel Laureate Public Lecture series. Prof Chu delivered the first lecture for this series, holding the audience in awe with his topic on "The How and Why of Laser Cooling and Trapping of Atoms."

The 61-year-old physicist is also an international advisory board member of the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) at the Nany ang Technological University (NTU) since 2005, and our Chairman, Professor K K Phua, is the director of this Institute. After Prof Chu came on board as the international advisor of IAS, talks have been in progress to pave the way towards spearheading and strengthening research collaboration in photonics technology among NTU, Shanghai Jiaotong University and the University of California, Berkeley, where he is based.

In 2004, Prof Chu, who was then the chair and professor in Physics at Stanford University, applied for and assumed the position of director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Under his leadership, Berkeley Lab has become a global centre of strategic importance in alternative and renewable energy research.

In recent years, Prof Chu has been advocating scientific research and programs to combat global warming. He makes a strong push to broaden the research and development of alternative sources of energy, and also strongly advocates for reduced dependency on fossil fuel as a measure to diminish the impact of global warming.

Unknown to many, Prof Chu earned his BA in mathematics and a BSc in physics from the University of Rochester, not the créme de la créme of colleges like Harvard, Yale, Stanford and that certainly gave him greater freedom to indulge in the research of his passion. He obtained his PhD in physics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Three of World Scientific's Authors

Awarded 2008 Nobel Prizes

Jubilant mood abound when three of World Scientific's authors - Professor Yoichiro Nambu, Professor Makoto Kobayashi and Professor Osamu Shimomura - were announced as Nobel Prize winners in 2008. Prof Nambu and Prof Kobayashi are named Nobel Laureates in Physics for 2008, and Prof Shimomura, the Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.

Our collaboration with Professor Yoichiro Nambu goes all the way back to the 1980s. He authored the book, entitled QUARKS: Frontiers in Elementary Particle Physics which was published in 1985.

In 1995, WorldScientific published the groundbreaking works of Prof Nambu, titled BROKEN SYMMETRY: Selected Papers of Y Nambu which contains the first paper on spontaneous symmetry breaking (1961). Professor Tohru Eguchi from the University of Tokyo, the editor of Broken Symmetry, has commented that this unpublished paper, presented at a conference in Purdue University in 1960, would have been inaccessible and may not have been noticed by the Nobel Committee had it not been included in the book Broken Symmetry.

After a 50-year career as a physics professor at the University of Chicago, Japanese-born Prof Nambu is now Henry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at its Department of Physics and the Enrico Fermi Institute.

Professor Makoto Kobayashi, who is a Japanese physicist wellknown for his work on CP-violation at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), was on the panel of editors for the book, A GARDEN OF QUANTA: Essays in Honor of Hiroshi Ezawa, published by World Scientific.

Professor Osamu Shimomura, together with Prof Martin Chalfie and Prof Roger Y. Tsien, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering green flourescent protein and related marine photoproteins, and developing them into highly useful tools for chemical, biological, and medical analysis.

In 2006, WorldScientific published Prof Shimomura's bestselling and authoritative book entitled BIOLUMINESCENCE: Chemical Principles and Methods which provides a comprehensive overview of the biochemical aspects of all luminous organisms currently known.

Professor Shimomurais currently Professor Emeritus at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts and Boston University School of Medicine.