"Ode to a Quantum Physicist" celebrates the scientific achievements
of Marlan O. Scully on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. It
combines personal reminiscences from other renowned physicists who
have known and worked with him over the years and 60+ scientific
articles from the frontiers of Quantum Optics inspired by the work
of M. O. Scully. The topics of these articles, published in the
special volume 179 of "Optics Communications," range from classical
optics via atomic physics and quantum mechanics to non-linear
optics.
The book opens with special greetings from Tony Siegman, the former
president of the Optical Society of America and Benjamin Bederson,
the Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of "Physical Review." A long time
friend, Ali Javan, dating back to Marlan's MIT days, highlights
some of Marlan's scientific contributions.
Heidi Fearn's poems humanize physical phenomena and set the stage
for the more personal reminiscences to come.
Friends and colleagues of Marlan from the various stages of his
scientific life shed some light on his human side. These stories
reflect the admiration and respect the quantum physics community
holds for Marlan and bring out many humorous anecdotes of their
interactions with him. Judy Scully, his wife, takes us through
Marlan's youth and college years in Wyoming. Leon Cohen illuminates
the Yale days and Marlan's interactions with Willis E. Lamb. Pierre
Meystre describes his arrival in Tucson from
Switzerland for his first postdoctoral position with Marlan. The
move from Tucson to Albuquerque is one of Suhail Zubairy's
memories. Herbert Walther shines light on the impact of the
multi-national Marlan and in particular, on the Max-Planck-Institut
fu Quantenoptik. Wolfgang Schleich looks at his mentor
Marlan from a graduate student's point of view and opens the arena
for Reesor Woodling's description of Marlan's cattle business. We
conclude the trail by the article of Thomas Walther, Ed Fry and
George Welsch, who bring us up to date with Marlan's activities in
Texas A & M.
The actual birthday party and scientific celebration took place as
a special two-day colloquium on "Modern Trends in Quantum Optics"
at the Max-Planck-Institut fur Quantenoptic in Garching, Germany on
June 29-30, 1999. Included in this book is the program of this
meeting, as wel as some excerpts from the celebration, such as, the
after dinner speech by Roy J. Glauber followed by a photo album of
Marlan's life. The poems by Olga Kocharovskaya poetically describe
Marlan's scientific achievements. The concluding talk by Bruce
Shore, given at this meeting, begins the connection to the papers
by Don Kobe, Danny Greenberger and Mark Hillary, and Shi-Yao Zhu et
al. covering topics from gauge invariance via unbreakable codes to
photonic band gaps. The articles from the special issue of "Optics
Communications" conclude this Festschrift.