Laser Cooler Next Energy Secretary

Well I'm sure the physics blogosphere is abuzz with the news that Steven Chu is expected to be named by President-elect Obama to head the Department of Energy. Wait let me look. Yep: heisendad, varyingsean, chunothsu, angryphysicist, nanodude, lubotic, toinfinityandbeyond and thedeterminantsnotzero. (OK that last comes from non-physicists, but I couldn't resist a linear algebra joke.)

Since I have little to add besides the fact that laser cooling rocks, I present the first few lines of a song that was sung by a band at Berkeley concerning the person Chu shared the Nobel prize with, Cohen-Tannoudji:

Cohen-Tannoudji
Does quantum mechanics
His book's in two volumes
I think it's satanic

And a question: the first cabinet member who has a paper on the arXiv?

More like this

But I really don't know who it could possibly be. If the latest set of transition leaks are as accurate as the previous few have been, President-Elect Obama will announce the nomination of Steven Chu for Energy Secretary. And. The. Crowd. Goes. Wild. Chu's background is a bit light on the…
NIST's Dave Wineland has been awarded the National Medal of Science. Wineland is one of the most impressive figures in modern AMO physics, with a long list of accomplishments. As the NIST release explains: Wineland is internationally recognized for developing the technique of using lasers to cool…
A few months back, I got a call from a writer at a physics magazine, asking for comments on a controversy within AMO physics. I read a bunch of papers, and really didn't quite understand the problem; not so much the issue at stake, but why it was so heated. When I spoke to the writer (I'm going to…
Steven Chu of Lawrence Berkeley Labs is reported to be President-elect Obama's nominee for Secretary of Energy. While much will be made of his Nobel Prize and his aggressive advocacy for science-based solutions to the climate crisis, his nomination is important for another reason. Chu is Steve 75…