Herbert Walther

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Prof. Dr. Dr. Herbert Walther was an internationally acclaimed leader in the fields of quantum optics and laser physics. He was born in Ludwigshafen/Rhein in 1935 and died near Munich in 2006. He was a founding director of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching, Germany. He also was Chair of Physics at Ludwig Maximilian’s University in Munich. He is primarily known for his experimental work on cavity quantum electrodynamics (in the form of the micromaser) as well his groundbreaking work on the ion trap. At the time of his death he had over 600 publications and numerous awards from a number of prestigious physics and optics societies.