Before researchers can experiment with a promising new quantum material, someone has to produce it.

For all its strangeness—or perhaps because of it—quantum mechanics holds enormous technological promise. Computers built on the unique rules of quantum mechanics have the potential to solve problems that are literally unsolvable on even the most powerful traditional computers. Quantum key distribution seems poised to bolster information security, and materials built on the interactions of quantum particles form the basis of extremely sensitive detectors.

On April 5, 2018, physicist Michael Berry delivered the Eugene P. Wigner Distinguished Lecture on the topic “Making Light of Mathematics.” His talk reflected on Wigner’s 1960 paper, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences.” This is an edited transcript of our conversation following his lecture.

While V-J Day in August 1945 heralded the end of World War II for most of the country, it brought uncertainty to many of the men and women of the Manhattan Project.

The doughnut-shaped ITER will, for the first time on Earth, create a burning (self-heating) plasma and contain it with a magnetic field. The plasma itself will be heated and sustained primarily by its own fusion reactions—literally the same energy source that powers the sun and the stars. 

The next great materials discovery may well come from the exotic interactions of electrons at a scale a million times smaller than a human hair. This is the scale of quantum physics, and it’s where ORNL’s Huibo Cao focuses his effort.

What does a high school grad do when his family threatens to make him pay rent? For ORNL spectroscopist Ben Doughty, the answer was, go to college.