<aside> 🎙️ Introducing Endgame, a podcast by the School of Government and Public Policy Indonesia.
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On this page:
Nobelist, physicist, Stanford professor, Steven Chu talks about the updated story of climate change, the unheard story behind his Nobel Prize & time in public service, and how he thinks that meritocracy is at risk.
STEVEN CHU
William R. Kenan Jr. Professor, Stanford University
<aside> 📌 Best known as the 1997 Nobel Laureate in Physics for the "development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light," and the 12th US Secretary of Energy.
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Personal Information:
Born on 28 February 1948 in St. Louis, MO, USA
He is married to physicist Jean Fetter-Chu, and the couple has two sons, Geoffrey and Michael.
<aside> đź“Ž Jean Chu holds a D.Phil. in Physics from Oxford and has served as chief of staff to two Stanford University presidents as well as Dean of Admissions.
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Prof. Chu’s family background: TL;DR Chu was born into an academic family of Chinese heritage.
<aside> đź’ˇ More about his family background from his interview with the Nobel Prize:
His father, Ju Chin Chu, came to the United States in 1943 to continue his education at MIT in chemical engineering, and two years later, his mother, Ching Chen Li, joined him to study economics. A generation earlier, his grandfather from his mother's side earned his advanced degrees in civil engineering at Cornell while his brother studied physics under Perrin at the Sorbonne before they returned to China.
Chu and all of his siblings were born as part of a typical nomadic academic career: his older brother was born in 1946 while his father was finishing at MIT, Chu was born in St. Louis in 1948 while his father taught at Washington University, and his younger brother completed the family in Queens shortly after his father took a position as a professor at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute.
Chu stated that education in his family was not merely emphasized, it was our raison d’être. All of his aunts and uncles had Ph.D.s in science or engineering, and it was taken for granted that the next generation of Chu’s were to follow the family tradition. When the dust had settled, my two brothers and four cousins collected three MDs, four Ph.D.s and a law degree. I could manage only a single advanced degree.
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Education: