Steven Chu is an American physicist and former government official. He is a Nobel laureate and was the 12th U.S. secretary of energy. He is currently the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University. He 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. The Nobel Prize in Physics 1997, announced October 15, 1997. Steven Chu, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, and William D. Phillips, “for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light”. Steven Chu: born 1948, St. Louis, MO, USA. Claude Cohen-Tannoudji: born 1933, Constantine, French Algeria (now Algeria). William D. Phillips: born 1948, Wilkes-Barre, PA, USA. Wiki link Wiki link Wiki link Data: the Nobel Foundation (CC0).