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U
N I V
E R S
I T Y
O F
The College
ROCHESTER
Department
of Physics and Astronomy
June 11, 2004
Dear Colleague:
The Department of Physics
and Astronomy at the University of
Rochester is continuing its drive for an endowment fund established in
memory
of Professor Leonard Mandel. The fund will be used to support the
Leonard
Mandel 
Faculty Scholar Award in
Physics at
the University of Rochester. The Mandel Faculty Scholar Award will be
given for
a fixed period to a faculty member at Rochester who is doing
outstanding work
in the field of optical science. The funds will be used by the Mandel
Faculty
Scholar to support a Mandel Fellowship at the graduate student or
postdoctoral
level.
The
University of Rochester Meliora Weekend and the 88th
Annual OSA meeting Frontiers in Optics 2004 take place
in Rochester
the weekend beginning October 8, 2004. Many alumni and friends of Len’s
will be
in town and this has been chosen as the ideal time to dedicate the
newly
designated Leonard Mandel Seminar Room.
The dedication will be on Sunday of that weekend, October 10, at
11 a.m.
in Bausch and Lomb Room 372. We hope you will be able to stop by and
join
friends and colleagues on this occasion.
Leonard
Mandel joined
the Faculty of the University of Rochester in 1964 as Professor of
Physics,
after having been for several years a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at
Imperial
College, London University, England.
Soon after arriving in
Rochester,
Mandel began building a research group, which became active in the
emerging
field of quantum optics. Mandel is
generally considered to be one of the founders of the field. The central theme of his
research was
the exploration of the nature of light, and he and his students
performed
pioneering experiments that have become landmarks in the development of
quantum
optics.
Mandel’s first major
contribution to quantum optics was his
derivation in 1958 of a key formula, now generally known as Mandel’s
formula,
for the probability distribution of photoelectrons emitted from a
photodetector
illuminated by a light beam. Soon
afterwards Mandel began to play a leading role in the search for and
the
analysis of quantum states of the electromagnetic field that have no
classical
counterparts, now generally known as non-classical states.
He and his students were the first to
observe such states.
In the 1980’s Mandel
began what would become a landmark
sequence of experiments using highly correlated pairs of photons
produced by
the fission of a pump photon in the process of parametric down
conversion. In this way he and his
students
demonstrated quantum spatial beating, violations of local realism,
phase memory
due to quantum entanglement with the vacuum, and invented a two-photon
interferometer now in world-wide use.
Mandel supervised the
thesis research of 39 students many of
whom have become leading figures in science and technology. From 1966 to 1995 he was one of the
main organizers of an international conference series known as the
Rochester
Conferences on Coherence and Quantum Optics. Mandel
was a distinguished teacher. He had a
special interest in neophyte
science students and developed the first course at the University of
Rochester
for non-science majors, which he taught regularly for 20 years. In 1992 he received the University of
Rochester Graduate Teaching Award.
Mandel was co-author of
the definitive text Optical
Coherence and Quantum Optics. He
received
many awards for his contributions to optics, including the Ives Medal
and the
Max Born awards of the Optical Society of America, the Marconi Medal of
the
Italian Research Council and the Thomas Young Award of the British
Institute of
Physics. In recognition of his
many achievements and contributions, Mandel was named, in February
1994, the Lee
DuBridge Professor of Physics and Optics at the University of Rochester. In 1996, Mandel was elected to
membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2001 he
was
elected posthumously to membership in the National Academy of Sciences.
By creating
an endowment at the University of
Rochester in honor of the career of Leonard Mandel, one can be sure
that
Professor Mandel's devotion to research and education in optics - a
frontier of
modern science and technology - will be carried on.
The
endowment fund now exceeds $75,000. The department looks forward to
receiving
your support towards achievement of the goal of full funding for
the Mandel
Award and Fellowship within the next three years.
Sincerely
yours,
Arie Bodek,
Chair
(on behalf
of the Mandel
Fundraising Committee
A.
Bodek, N.
P. Bigelow, S.
Brignall, S. Chu, F.
Davidson, J. H. Eberly, E. Wolf,
H.Jeffrey Kimble)
P.S. If you plan to attend the dedication
during Meliora Weekend/OSA
Annual Meeting
at
Rochester, Sunday October 10, 2004 please RSVP to
shirl@pas.rochester.edu
(see:
http://www.osa.org/meetings/annual/program/highlights/#dedication
Frontiers in Optics and http://www.rochester.edu/alumni/meliora2004/ for Meliora Weekend – 2004.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I
wish to
contribute to the Leonard Mandel Endowment Fund. My
contribution:
$________
[ ]
check enclosed
[ ] VISA
[ ] MasterCard
Card #_______________Exp. Date_______
Name______________________________________________________________
Address____________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________
Year/Degree________________________________________________________
If donating by check, please make sure your check is payable to the University of Rochester, and indicate that it is for the Leonard Mandel Fund. Gifts of appreciated securities are also gratefully accepted. Please return this form to:
Chair, Department of Physics
and Astronomy
University of Rochester
PO Box 270171
Rochester, New York 14627-0171
USA