Professor Leo Esaki lectures at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina
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Alexandria, 20 June 2005—The Challenge in Frontiers between Science and Technology was explored at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, 19 June 2005, in a lecture by the 1973 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Professor Leo Esaki.
Professor Esaki’s lecture came within the events celebrating the centennial of 1905, Einstein’s miraculous year. During the lecture, Professor Esaki spoke of his career and of superlattice research. He also touched upon how global information societies move towards knowledge societies when “the progress of civilizations increasingly hinges on intellectual creativity of new knowledge”, and how the “stimulation of the nation’s socioeconomic systems and a strengthening of its international competitiveness can be achieved with an enrichment of its intellectual property as well as resources”. Highlights of the lecture included his list of five “don’ts”, which he encouraged anyone with an interest in realizing his or her creative potential to follow.
Leo Esaki was born in Osaka, Japan in 1925. Studying physics at the University of Tokyo, he received his B.S. in 1947 and his Ph.D. in 1959. He joined Sony Corporation, and it was there in 1957 that he discovered the tunnel diode, the first quantum electron device, for which he received the Nobel Prize. He moved to the United States in 1960 and joined the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, where he became an IBM Fellow in 1967. He is currently Director of IBM-Japan, Ltd, as well as the Yamada Science Foundation and the Science and Technology Foundation of Japan. He serves on numerous international scientific advisory boards and committees and is member of a number of distinguished scientific institutions, and is the recipient of received several awards in recognition of his scientific contributions.
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| Professor Esaki during his lecture |