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Renowned award-winners

Numerous renowned researchers and scientists have already received the Carl Zeiss Research Award. All award-winners achieved a major breakthrough in optical research. For example, Eric A. Cornell, Ahmed Zewai, Stefan Hell and Shuji Nakamura went on to win the Nobel Prize.


The 2013 Research Award has been won by Anne L'Huillier from Lund University (Sweden). She was honored for her pioneering work in the field of high harmonic generation which has laid the foundation for the generation of attosecond impulses and enabled key advances in attosecond physics. Her works enables further development and application of this technology. Attosecond impulses can be used, for example, to observe the movement of electrons in atoms or molecules in real-time. This plays a key role in understanding general physical phenomena or chemical reactions at the atomic level.

Ahmed Zewail made it possible to directly view the process of chemical reactions on individual molecules with maximum resolution in both space and time through the combination of state-of-the-art molecule-beam technology and ultra-fast laser spectroscopy. He received the Carl Zeiss Research Award in 1992 and the Nobel Prize in 1999.

Using laser light, Dr. Eric A. Cornell succeeded in cooling atoms to the extremely low temperature of 100 nanokelvins, enabling the examination of a long-predicted state of matter. He received the Carl Zeiss Research Award for his work in 1996 and the Nobel Prize five years later.

All award-winners achieved a major breakthrough in optical research.

Starting with 2016 the Carl Zeiss Research Award will be presented by CARL ZEISS AG, the Ernst-Abbe-Fonds will award the Carl Zeiss Award for Young Researchers instead.