Thomas Ebbesen

Thomas Ebbesen (also Thomas W. Ebbesen ) ( born January 30, 1954 in Oslo) is a Norwegian physicist and chemist.

Career

Thomas Ebbesen received his bachelor's degree from Oberlin College in Ohio and the Ph.D. at the University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris in the field of photo-physical chemistry. He then worked at the Notre Dame Radiation Laboratory ( NDRL ) in the United States and then went in 1988 at the NEC Fundamental Research Laboratories in Japan. There he studied the new carbon materials such as fullerenes ( C60), Graphene and carbon nanotubes. Once it was possible to produce carbon nanotubes in large quantities, he determined with colleagues some of their unique properties. For this he received in 2001 along with Sumio Iijima, Cees Dekker and Paul McEuen the Euro Physics Prize of the European Physical Society.

In his work in the NEC Laboratories Ebbesen discovered a new optical phenomenon: small holes in the opaque metallic film, the diameter of which is smaller than the wavelength of the incident light, showed an increase in the transmission of light through the holes, and a filtering effect with respect to the wavelength. The cause had interactions with electronic resonances on the surface of the thin metal film. The effect ( Extraordinary Electromagnetic Transmission, EET), which was surprising theoretically unexpected and for the experts left, be controlled by the size and geometry of the holes and promises applications in optoelectronics, in chemical sensors and biophysics. Ebbesen applies his research as one of the pioneers in the nanosciences and is currently a professor at the University of Strasbourg.

Ebbesen is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences, Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and Arts and the French Academy of Sciences.

Awards

• NEC Research Prize 1992
• Randers Prize 2001
• Agilent Euro Physics Prize 2001
• Prix ​​France Telecom 2005
• Tomassoni Prize 2009
• Scola Physica Romana Medal 2009
• Quantum Electronics and Optics Prize 2009