As a rule, theoretical physicists are used to putting up their best ideas and then watching them crash and burn as soon as a colleague spots a flaw in their reasoning.
But in 1987, when a 30-year-old Princeton University researcher named Sajeev John was working on a paper about the concept of “photonic band gaps,” it dawned on him that what he was describing was certain to work.
“That’s when it really struck me,” he said. “I became sure in my mind that it was possible to trap light.”
The intuition proved correct. Dr. John – who moved to the University of Toronto in 1989 – saw his idea flourish and grow into an entire field. At its heart is a class of materials called photonic crystals whose properties can be used to confine and manipulate light. Today, they are used in optical coatings and telecommunications and medical devices. In future they could lead to more efficient solar panels and to quantum computers that run on light.
On Wednesday, Dr. John was named this year’s winner of the Herzberg gold medal – one of Canada’s most prestigious science prizes, bestowed annually by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.
The award, which recognizes contributions made over a scientist’s entire career, is just the latest for Dr. John, who has previously won Germany’s Humboldt Prize, Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal science prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship from the United States. In 2017, he was named an officer of the Order of Canada.
Born in India, Dr. John came to Canada when he was 4 and grew up in London, Ont., the child of academic parents. As a teenager his technical abilities were readily apparent, scoring him admission to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his undergraduate degree and then Harvard University, where he earned his PhD in 1984.
But while physics was his playground, the more challenging dilemma for Dr. John was what he could do with it that might prove useful. His PhD work had included the notion of localizing sound waves within a solid. Now he began to wonder if something similar might be possible with light.
Read More at https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-light-trapping-physicist-earns-top-canadian-science-prize/
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