50 Facts About Steven Chu

1.

Steven Chu was born on February 28,1948 and is an American physicist and former government official.

2.

Steven Chu is a Nobel laureate and was the 12th US Secretary of Energy.

3.

Steven Chu is known for his research at the University of California, Berkeley, and his research at Bell Laboratories and Stanford University regarding the cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, for which he shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Daniel Phillips.

4.

At the time of his appointment as Energy Secretary, Steven Chu was a professor of physics and molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where his research was concerned primarily with the study of biological systems at the single molecule level.

5.

Steven Chu is a vocal advocate for more research into renewable energy and nuclear power, arguing that a shift away from fossil fuels is essential to combating climate change.

6.

Steven Chu has conceived of a global "glucose economy", a form of a low-carbon economy, in which glucose from tropical plants is shipped around like oil is today.

7.

On February 22,2019, Steven Chu began a one-year term as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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8.

Steven Chu was born on 28 February 1948 in St Louis, Missouri, with Chinese ancestry from Liuhe, Taicang, China, He attended Garden City High School in Garden City, New York.

9.

Steven Chu comes from a family of highly educated white collar professionals and scholars.

10.

Steven Chu's older brother, Gilbert Steven Chu, is a professor of biochemistry and medicine at Stanford University.

11.

Steven Chu left Bell Labs and became a professor of physics at Stanford University in 1987, serving as the chair of its Physics Department from 1990 to 1993 and from 1999 to 2001.

12.

Under Steven Chu's leadership, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory was a center of research into biofuels and solar energy.

13.

Steven Chu spearheaded the laboratory's Helios project, an initiative to develop methods of harnessing solar power as a source of renewable energy for transportation.

14.

Steven Chu studied enzyme activity and protein and RNA folding using techniques like fluorescence resonance energy transfer, atomic force microscopy, and optical tweezers.

15.

Steven Chu continued researching atomic physics as well and developed new methods of laser cooling and trapping.

16.

Steven Chu was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 for the "development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light", together with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Daniel Phillips.

17.

Steven Chu is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Academia Sinica of Taiwan, and is a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Korean Academy of Science and Engineering.

18.

Steven Chu was awarded the Humboldt Prize by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 1995.

19.

In 1998, Steven Chu received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

20.

Steven Chu received an honorary doctorate from Boston University when he was the keynote speaker at the 2007 commencement exercises.

21.

Steven Chu is a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council.

22.

Steven Chu was awarded an honorary degree from Yale University during its 2010 commencement.

23.

Steven Chu was awarded an honorary degree from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, the same institution at which his father taught for several years, during its 2011 commencement.

24.

In 2014, Steven Chu was awarded an honorary doctorate from Williams College, during which he gave a talk moderated by Williams College Professor Protik Majumder.

25.

Steven Chu was awarded an honorary doctorate from Dartmouth College during its 2015 commencement.

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26.

Steven Chu was awarded an honorary doctorate from Amherst College in 2017, where he later gave a lecture titled "Climate Change and Needed Technical Solutions for a Sustainable Future" in March 2018.

27.

Steven Chu was elected an international fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering UK in 2011, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2014.

28.

Steven Chu pioneered the development of atom interferometry for precision measurement, and he introduced methods to visualize and manipulate single bio-molecules simultaneously with optical tweezers.

29.

On January 21,2009, Steven Chu was sworn in as Secretary of Energy in the Barack Obama administration.

30.

Steven Chu is the first person appointed to the US Cabinet after having won a Nobel Prize.

31.

Steven Chu is the second Chinese American to be a member of the US Cabinet, after former Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke.

32.

In March 2011 Steven Chu said that regulators at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission should not delay approving construction licenses for planned US nuclear power plants in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan.

33.

Steven Chu responded to the panel's report on hydraulic fracturing, the controversial drilling method that is enabling a US gas boom while bringing fears of groundwater contamination.

34.

Steven Chu said that he would "be working closely with my colleagues in the Administration to review the recommendations and to chart a path for continued development of this vital energy resource in a safe manner".

35.

On February 12,2013, Steven Chu was the designated survivor during the State of the Union address.

36.

On February 1,2013, Steven Chu announced his intent to resign.

37.

Steven Chu has been a vocal advocate for more research into renewable energy and nuclear power, arguing that a shift away from fossil fuels is essential to combat climate change and global warming.

38.

Steven Chu spoke at the 2009 and 2011 National Science Bowl about the importance of America's science students, emphasizing their future role in environmental planning and global initiative.

39.

Steven Chu said that a typical coal power plant emits 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant.

40.

Steven Chu warns that global warming could wipe out California farms within the century.

41.

Steven Chu joined the Copenhagen Climate Council, an international collaboration between business and science established to create momentum for the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

42.

In 2015, Steven Chu signed the Mainau Declaration 2015 on Climate Change on the final day of the 65th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting.

43.

Steven Chu was instrumental in submitting a winning bid for the Energy Biosciences Institute, a BP-funded $500 million multidisciplinary collaboration between UC Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, and the University of Illinois.

44.

Samuel Thernstrom, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and co-director of its Geoengineering Project, expressed support for the idea in The American, praising Steven Chu for "do[ing] the nation a service" with the concept.

45.

Steven Chu is on the board of directors of Xyleco, a company developing alternate energy.

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46.

Steven Chu has two sons, Geoffrey and Michael, from a previous marriage to Lisa Chu-Thielbar.

47.

Steven Chu is interested in sports such as baseball, swimming, and cycling.

48.

Steven Chu taught himself how to pole vault using bamboo poles obtained from the local carpet store.

49.

Steven Chu said he never learned to speak Chinese because his parents always spoke to their children in English.

50.

Steven Chu has been satirised as a no-nonsense Secretary of Energy in a cutaway gag in season 11 of the American animated comedy show Family Guy.