Peter Lu

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Peter James Lu (陸述義, b. 1978 in Cleveland, OH) is a physics graduate student (Ph.D defence was April 25th, 2008) at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. His most widely-known discovery, amidst pursuits in several diverse fields (see below), has come in the identification of quasi-crystalline patterns in medieval Islamic tilings.[1][2] Lu grew up in West Chester, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia, where an early interest in rock collecting[3] developed into unprecedented success at the National Science Olympiad, where Lu won seven gold medals, four of which came in the event, "Rocks, Minerals, and Fossils." Lu went on to pursue a physics degree (A.B.) at Princeton University, where he graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. His senior thesis research under Paul Steinhardt, which was eventually published in Physical Review Letters,[4] involved searching powder diffraction patterns for a naturally occurring quasi-crystal.

Lu's collaboration with Princeton material scientist Nan Yao led to two other significant publications, the lead chapter of Handbook of Microscopy for Nanotechnology[5], and a paper on the "Earliest Use of Corundum and Diamond in Prehistoric China"[6]. This research showed that diamond, not quartz (as had been long-thought), was the polishing agent used by Chinese artisans on jade axes, dated to between 4000 and 2500 BC, pushing the date of the first use of diamond over two thousand years earlier than the previously thought.[7]

Further interest in the intersection of technology and Chinese art led to a paper in the "Brevia" section of Science, this time regarding the earliest established compound machine[8] (as opposed to a simple machine). Prior to this paper, the earliest compound machines were thought to be of Greek origin (e.g., Archimedes' screw); this work found them in China, pre-dating Archimedes by several centuries[9].

Continued interest in Paleontology and collaboration with his college roommate Motohiro Yogo led to a landmark paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences[10]. Leveraging vector autoregression analysis upon an established marine fossil record, the authors found that a "speed limit," which was previously thought to restrict the reemergence of biodiversity following a mass extinction, does not in fact appear. According to paleontologist Douglas Erwin of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., "This is the battle line for the next decade in paleontology."[11]

Lu's work with medieval Islamic tilings received substantial worldwide news coverage[12] for its timely scientific and political implications. Quasi-crystalline patterns, not widely known to the West until the discovery of Penrose tilings in 1973, were found on mausoleums and mosques dating to around 1500 A.D. in Iran and Turkey. Lu's research proposed the utilization of girih tiles in decorating the structures, which would allow common workers the ability to create such otherwise-complicated patterns.

Lu's doctoral thesis research at Harvard University, in the experimental soft condensed matter group of David Weitz, concerns the behavior of colloidal particles in the laboratory and in zero-gravity situations. The laboratory work has led to new techniques for observing and modeling colloidal behavior[13], while the latter environment has comprised experiments on the International Space Station.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes and References

  1. ^ Peter J. Lu and Paul J. Steinhardt (2007). "Decagonal and Quasi-crystalline Tilings in Medieval Islamic Architecture". Science 315: 1106–1110. doi:10.1126/science.1135491. ;
  2. ^ Id., "Further notes on quasi-crystal tilings", Science, Vol. 316. no. 5827, pp. 981 - 982 (May 18, 2007)
  3. ^ http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/311/5763/931a
  4. ^ Peter J. Lu, Kenneth Deffeyes, Paul J. Steinhardt, and Nan Yao (2001). "Identifying and Indexing Icosahedral Quasicrystals from Powder Diffraction Patterns". PRL 87: 275507. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.87.275507. 
  5. ^ “Confocal Scanning Optical Microscopy and Nanotechnology,” in Handbook of Microscopy for Nanotechnology, N. Yao and Z. L. Wang eds., New York: Kluwer, pp. 3-24 (2005) & Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, pp. 1-23 (2006)
  6. ^ Peter J. Lu, Nan Yao, et al. (2005). "Earliest Use of Corundum and Diamond in Prehistoric China". Archaeometry 47: 1. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4754.2005.00184.x. 
  7. ^ See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4555235.stm.
  8. ^ Peter J. Lu (2004). "Early Precision Compound Machine from Ancient China". Science 304: 1638. doi:10.1126/science.1096588. 
  9. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Book of the Year, p. 150: http://www.physics.harvard.edu/~plu/research/spiral_rings/media/Britannica_2005.pdf
  10. ^ Peter J. Lu, Motohiro Yogo, and Charles Marshall (2006). "Phanerozoic Marine Biodiversity Dynamics in light of the Incompleteness of the Fossil Record". PNAS 103: 2736–2739. doi:10.1073/pnas.0511083103. 
  11. ^ Quoted in http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/311/5763/931a
  12. ^ Peter J. Lu — Research
  13. ^ Peter J. Lu, P. A. Sims, et al. (2007). "Target-locking Acquisition with Real-time Confocal (TARC) Microscopy". Optics Express 15: 8702. doi:10.1364/OE.15.008702. 

Austin, Jim. Profile - Peter Lu. Retrieved on 2006-02-17.

[edit] External links

  • Peter Lu's home page [1]
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