Professor Aharon Kapitulnik
Prof. Aharon Kapitulnik, Guest Lecturer at the Emilio Segre Distinguished Lectures in Physics Endowed by Raymond and Beverly Sackler for the academic year 2014/2015 is the Theodore and Sydney Rosenberg Professor in Applied Physics at the Departments of Applied Physics and Physics at Stanford University. Prof. Kapitulnik is also a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Prof. Kapitulnik received both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Tel-Aviv University. He completed his post-doctoral training at the Chaim Weizmann Institute of Science and served as an Associate member at the University of California Santa Barbara. He joined the Department of Applied Physics at Stanford University in 1985 and has been holding positions jointly in the Applied Physics Department and the Center for Materials Research there. In 1992, he was Visiting Professor at Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, and U. of Paris XI, Orsay. Since 1994 he is a Professor at the Applied Physics Department at Stanford University.
Among Prof. Kapitulnik’s honors and awards are the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize (2015), the Heike Kamerlingh Onnes Prize (2009), the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (1986-90), and the Presidential Young Investigator Award (1987-92). He was also appointed as Sackler Professor by Special Appointment in the School of Physics and astronomy at Tel-Aviv University (2006-2015).
Prof. Kapitulnik’s research activities focus on studies of phenomena associated with the behavior of correlated and disordered electron systems, particularly in reduced dimensions, and the development of precision detection instrumentation. In particular, he developed the Sagnac Interferometer for sensitive detection of time-reversal symmetry breaking effects in solids, and novel, cantilever-based, instrumentation for testing inverse-square-law of gravity at sub-mm distance. He has also been engaged in scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy studies of correlated electron systems, including the cuprates and topological insulators. He holds 7 patents in areas of Applied Superconductivity, optics and low-temperature devices.
