2013. February 01.
The King Faisal International Prize for Science for the year 2013 has been awarded to Professor Ferenc Krausz, honorary doctor of Budapest University of Technology and Economics.
Professor Ferenc Krausz, Director at the Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching and Chair of Experimental Physics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich awarded the prize shared with Professor Paul B. Corkum, Research Chair in Attosecond Photonics, University of Ottawa (Canada). They will receive the King Faisal International Prize in an official ceremony to be held in March 2013.
Since 1978, this award has annually been given to scientists for outstanding achievements in five categories by the King Faisal Foundation in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia). Prof. Krausz and Prof. Corkum are recognized for their independent pioneering work which has made it possible to capture the incredibly fast motion of electrons in atoms and molecules in a "movie" with a time resolution down to attoseconds.
Ferenc Krausz studied electrical engineering at the Budapest University of Technology and theoretical physics at the Eötvös-Loránd University in Budapest. In 1991 he received his doctoral degree in Quantum Electronics at the Vienna University of Technology, where only two years later he received his habilitation. In 1999 he was appointed full professor at the Vienna University of Technology and in 2000 he became director of the centre for “Advanced Light Sources”. In 2003 he was offered the position of director at the Max-Planck-Institute of Quan-tum Optics, where he leads the “Attosecond Physics” Division. In 2004, he took over a Chair of Experimental Physics at the LMU Munich. Professor Krausz has been the recipient of numerous scientific awards and prizes, e.g. the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in 2005. In 2006 he was presented with the Quantum Electronics Award of the IEEE Laser and Electro-Optics Society as well . In 2011 he has received the “Verdienstkreuz am Bande” (order of merit) of the Federal Rebublic of Germany. Prof. Krausz is a member of many scientific societies and academies such as the Austrian and Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in Salzburg (Austria). In 2012 he became elected as a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and as a member of the Academia Europaea.