JILA Fellow Steven Cundiff has received the Optical Society of America’s 2011 William F. Meggers Award. The award recognizes outstanding work in the study and measurement of the interactions between light and matter (spectroscopy). The award cited Cundiff’s contributions to the field of ultrafast spectroscopy of semiconductors, including multidimensional Fourier transform techniques, and to the development of femtosecond frequency comb technology.
William F. Meggers worked at the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) from 1914 to 1958. Many consider Meggers to be the founder of the field of spectroscopy in the United States.