Girish S. Agarwal
Oklahoma State University
Candidate for General Councillor
Biographical Summary
Girish S. Agarwal is Regents Professor at Oklahoma State University and holds Noble Foundation Chair. He received his Ph.D degree in Physics from the University of Rochester in 1969. He has worked at many centers around the world including Joint institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, University of Colorado and Max-Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, Garching. He served as Director and Distinguished Scientist at Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India and held Einstein chair of the Indian National Science Academy.
Agarwal is a theoretical Physicist with contributions spanning many areas of quantum optics; coherence and statistical optics, plasmonics. He is the author of a well known research monograph “Quantum Optics”. He introduced the idea of coherences induced by vacuum, which is important in understanding the quantum control of matter. He is well known for his contributions to non classical states of light and atoms; cooperative resonance fluorescence; superradiance and optical bistability; vacuum Rabi splittings; and the external field produced dispersion management.
His 1975 papers on the QED phenomena at surfaces showed, much before the development of near field techniques, how to probe surface features by using dipolar fields. His theory of optical resonance in fluctuating fields became the driving force of many theoretical and experimental studies in the area. He discovered how entanglement can be transferred from field to atoms which led to methods for the production of the squeezed states of atoms, these ideas are now being applied to Bose condensates.
He was recently elected a fellow of the Royal Society, UK. He has been a fellow of the APS and the Optical Society of America for many years. His awards include Max Born Prize from the Optical Society of America, Humboldt Research Award of Germany and the Physics Prize of TWAS, Trieste.
Candidate's Statement
Physics always has been a source of great pleasure and even today when I succeed in doing a calculation gives me as much joy as it did when I was a young researcher. My students always have first priority on my time and I would love to train many more. One area which needs attention is rather inadequate preparation in mathematical physics when many enter graduate school which hinders further learning of physics. I believe physics is basic to many other fields of science and engineering that well trained physics graduate students would be needed by the society for a variety of jobs. Thus it is advisable to expand our graduate programs in physics to fulfill this need.
I strongly feel that we need to invest more in basic sciences and need to provide quite competitive opportunities to young Physicists. It is clear from the geographical distribution of the authors of papers in APS journals and participants at various APS meetings that APS provides the right forum for many around the world. It is thus desirable for our society to expand its international presence and to have collaborative effort with say European societies and centers like the ICTP, Trieste.
As a member I would continue to work towards these endeavors so that we are prepared to face future challenges.
