Papers pertain primarily to topics in physics and include notes, overhead transparencies from his lectures, reprints, articles, memos, proposals, correspondence, charts, and drawings. Subjects include electric dipole moment, diode lasers, and dye lasers; and there are some materials pertaining to departmental matters. Also included in the collection is the 1989 paper by P. Galison, B. Hevly, and R. Lowen, "Controlling the Monster - Stanford and the Growth of Physics Research, 1935-1962."

Steven Chu, co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1997, earned his A.B. in mathematics (1970) and his B.S. in physics (1970) at the University of Rochester and his Ph.D. in physics at the University of California, Berkeley, 1976. He was a member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories, 1978-1983, and then head of the Quantum Electronics Research Department, AT&T Bell Laboratories, 1983-1987. He joined the faculty at Stanford in 1987, was appointed Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor of Physics and Applied Physics in 1990, and served two terms as Chair of the Physics Department. He left Stanford in 2004 to become director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

4 Linear feet

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This collection is open for research.