Paul corkum biography

Canadian physicist (born 1943)

Paul Bruce CorkumOC OOnt FRSC FRS (born October 30, 1943) is a Canadian physicist specializing in attosecond physics and laser science.^[1] He holds a joint University of Ottawa–NRC chair in attosecond photonics.^[1] He also holds academic positions at Texas A&M University and the University of New Mexico.

Corkum is both a theorist and an experimentalist. He is known for developing the theory of attosecond physics.

Biography and research

Paul Corkum was born in Saint John, New Brunswick.^[2] He obtained his BSc (1965) from Acadia University, Nova Scotia, and his MSc (1967) and PhD (1972) in theoretical physics from Lehigh University, Pennsylvania.^[2][3] He won several awards for his work on laser science.

In the 1980s he developed a model of the ionization of atoms (i.e. plasma production) and on this basis proposed a new approach to making X-ray lasers