Laurens W. Molenkamp

Laurens W. Molenkamp (* 1956 in Garrelsweer ) is a Dutch experimental solid state physicist.

Life

Molenkamp received his bachelor's degree in 1977 and his degree in physical chemistry in 1980 from the University of Groningen, where he dealt in particular with coherent optical spectroscopy. After completing his PhD in Groningen in 1985 he was at the Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven, where he worked on quantum transport in semiconductor nanostructures. From 1994 he was professor at the RWTH Aachen and from 1999 professor and director of the third Institute of Experimental Physics at the University of Würzburg. He heads the molecular group (II- VI MBE) and deals with quantum transport and spintronics.

Work

After Bernevig and Shoucheng Zhang the existence of the quantum spin Hall effect ( the prototype of topological insulators ) in quantum wells proposed (sandwich structure consisting of a mercury telluride layer between two cadmium telluride layers ) the effect of the group of Molenkamp was detected in Würzburg in 2007.

In 2012, he was senior editor at Physical Review B. Earlier, he was co-editor of Physical Review Letters and Semiconductor Science and Technology, and he is co-editor of European Physics Journal- Applied Physics.

Awards

2010 Molenkamp received the Euro Physics Prize. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society. He is a recipient of an ERC Advanced Research Grant. In 2012 he was awarded with Shoucheng Zhang and Charles L. Kane Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize. In 2013 he was awarded with prize money of 300,000 euros Physics Frontiers Prize. For 2014, it Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize was awarded.