Margaret Murnane facts for kids

Margaret Mary Murnane, born in Ireland on January 23, 1959, is a famous physicist. She is a top expert in laser science and technology. She works as a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. She also leads a big science center called STROBE.

Dr. Murnane studies many exciting things. These include nanoscience, laser technology, and how materials and chemicals behave. She also studies plasma physics and imaging science. Her amazing work has won her many awards. These include the MacArthur Fellowship in 2000 and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics in 2021.

Early Life and Education

Margaret Murnane grew up in County Limerick, Ireland. She became interested in physics because her father was a teacher. She earned her first degrees from University College, Cork in Ireland.

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

Amazing Discoveries in Physics

Dr. Murnane has written over 500 articles for science journals. Her work has been used by other scientists many times. She is known for starting the field of ultrafast X-ray science. She has made huge contributions to this area since the 1980s.

Dr. Murnane is one of the most successful women experimental physicists in the U.S. She built her university lab with Professor Kapteyn.

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 help scientists record how atoms move in chemical reactions. They also show how atoms and electrons move in different materials.

Some of her lasers can create flashes shorter than 10 femtoseconds. A femtosecond is a tiny fraction of a second. These very powerful, short laser flashes can change light. They turn it into much shorter wavelengths, like extreme ultraviolet and soft X-ray light. This process is called high harmonic generation. It allows scientists to create X-ray laser light sources on a tabletop.

Pioneering X-ray and Attosecond Science

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 high harmonic generation works. She also developed the laser technology needed to use this process. This led to practical tabletop light sources.

She has used this new source to make important discoveries. These include understanding how atoms and chemicals behave. She also studied how materials change. She even used it for nanoimaging, which means taking pictures of tiny things.

Dr. Murnane also helped start "Attosecond Science." She did experiments that showed we can control how electrons move with amazing precision. An attosecond is even shorter than a femtosecond!

She is also a co-founder of KMLabs, Inc. This company sells these special laser technologies. They can be used for research and in industries.

Awards and Recognitions

Dr. Murnane has received many honors for her work. Here are some of them:

• 1991 National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award
• 1993 National Science Foundation Presidential Faculty Fellowship
• 1997 American Physical Society Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award
• 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
• 2017 Frederic Ives Medal/Quinn Prize from The Optical Society
• 2021 Benjamin Franklin Medal (Franklin Institute) in Physics
• 2022 Institute of Physics (UK) Isaac Newton Medal