Margaret Murnane facts for kids

Margaret Mary Murnane, born on January 23, 1959, is a famous Irish physicist. She is a professor of physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. She moved there in 1999. Before that, she worked at the University of Michigan and Washington State University.

She is currently in charge of the STROBE NSF Science and Technology Center. Dr. Murnane is one of the top researchers in laser science and technology today. Her work helps us understand many things. This includes how atoms and light behave. It also covers tiny materials and how chemicals change. She also studies plasma physics and imaging science.

Her amazing work has won her many awards. These include the MacArthur Fellowship in 2000. She also received the Frederic Ives Medal/Quinn Prize in 2017. This is the highest award from The Optical Society. In 2021, she won the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics. In 2022, she was awarded the Isaac Newton Medal.

Early life and education

Margaret Murnane grew up in County Limerick, Ireland. Her father was a primary school teacher. He helped her become interested in physics. She earned her first degrees from University College, Cork.

Later, she moved to the United States. She studied at the University of California, Berkeley. She earned her PhD there in 1989. She is married to another physics professor, Henry Kapteyn. They work together in their own lab. Their lab is at JILA at the University of Colorado.

Amazing career in physics

Dr. Murnane has written over 500 articles for science journals. Her work has been mentioned by other scientists about 35,000 times. She helped start the field of ultrafast X-ray science. This means studying things that happen incredibly fast using X-rays. She has made huge discoveries in this area since the 1980s.

She is also one of the most successful women experimental physicists in the U.S. She and Professor Kapteyn built their university lab from the ground up.

Super-fast lasers

In their lab, Dr. Murnane, Professor Kapteyn, and their students create special lasers. These lasers flash like a strobe light. But each flash is a trillion times faster! These super-fast lasers are like camera flashes. They let scientists record how atoms move in chemical reactions. They also show how atoms and electrons move in different materials.

Some of her lasers can make flashes shorter than 10 femtoseconds. A femtosecond is an incredibly tiny amount of time. Because these laser flashes are so powerful, they can change light. They can turn regular light into much shorter wavelengths. This includes extreme ultraviolet and soft X-ray light. This process is called high harmonic generation. It allows them to create a small, tabletop X-ray laser light source.

Discoveries with X-rays

Professor Murnane was the first to use femtosecond lasers to create X-rays. She has made many important discoveries in this field. She helped us understand how the high harmonic process works. She also developed the laser technology needed to use this process. This led to practical tabletop light sources for many uses.

She has used this new X-ray source to make big discoveries. These include understanding how atoms and chemicals move. She also studies how materials change and how to image tiny things. She also helped start "Attosecond Science." An attosecond is even shorter than a femtosecond! She did experiments that showed we can control how electrons move with amazing precision.

Dr. Murnane also helped start a laser company called KMLabs, Inc. This company sells these special laser technologies. They can be used for research and in industries. For example, they can help measure things at a very tiny scale.

Awards and recognition

• 1991: Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation
• 1993: Presidential Faculty Fellowship from the National Science Foundation
• 1997: Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award from the American Physical Society
• 2000: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellow
• 2004: Member of the National Academy of Sciences
• 2006: Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 2010: Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science
• 2011: Boyle Medal
• 2015: Honorary doctorate from Trinity College Dublin
• 2017: Frederic Ives Medal/Quinn Prize in optics from The Optical Society
• 2021: Benjamin Franklin Medal (Franklin Institute) in Physics
• 2022: Isaac Newton Medal, from Institute of Physics (UK)
• 2023: Honorary doctorate from the University of Salamanca, Spain