路易斯·布鲁斯1943—2026

早年生活和教育

路易斯·尤金·布鲁斯 (Louis Eugene Brus) 1943年出生于美国俄亥俄州克利夫兰。 在堪萨斯州罗兰帕克的高中期间，他对化学和物理产生了兴趣。

1961年，他获得海军预备役军官训练团 (Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps, NROTC) 大学奖学金进入莱斯大学，该奖学金要求他以见习官身份参加 NROTC 的海上活动。 他于1965年毕业，并前往哥伦比亚大学攻读博士学位。 在他的论文中，他在理查·伯索恩（Richard Bersohn）的指导下研究了碘化钠蒸气的光解。

1969年获得博士学位后，布鲁斯以中尉身份返回海军，并与林明璋合作在华盛顿特区的美国海军研究实验室担任科学参谋。

在伯索恩的推荐下，布鲁斯永久离开海军，并于1973年加入AT&T贝尔实验室，在那里他的工作导致了量子点的发现。 1996年，布鲁斯离开贝尔实验室，加入哥伦比亚大学化学系任教。

荣誉和奖项

2006年，获美国光学学会R·W·伍德奖。

2008年，获首届科维理纳米科学奖。

2010年，获莱斯大学校友协会杰出校友奖。

2012年，获富兰克林研究所Bower科学成就奖。

2023年，获得诺贝尔化学奖。

Louis Eugene Brus (August 10, 1943 – January 11, 2026) was an American chemist, and the Samuel Latham Mitchell Professor of Chemistry at Columbia University. He was the co-discoverer of the colloidal semi-conductor nanocrystals known as quantum dots. In 2023, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Early life and education

Louis Eugene Brus was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on August 10, 1943. During high school in Roeland Park, Kansas, he developed an interest in chemistry and physics.

He entered Rice University in 1961 with a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) college scholarship, which required him to participate in NROTC activities at sea as a midshipman. In 1965, he graduated from Rice with a B.S. degree in chemical physics, and then moved to Columbia University for his doctoral research. For his dissertation, he worked on the photodissociation of sodium iodide vapor, under the supervision of Richard Bersohn. After obtaining his Ph.D. degree in chemical physics in 1969, Brus returned to the Navy as a lieutenant and served as a scientific staff officer in collaboration with Lin Ming-chang, at the United States Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.

Under the recommendation of Bersohn, Brus left the Navy permanently and joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1973, where he did the work that led to the discovery of quantum dots. In 1996, Brus left Bell Labs and joined the faculty in the Department of Chemistry at Columbia University.

Work on quantum dots

Brus was a foundational figure in the research and development of quantum dots. Quantum dots are tiny semiconducting crystals whose nanoscale size gives them unique optical and electronic properties. He was independently the first to synthesize them in a solution in 1982. At the time, he was studying organic photochemistry on cadmium sulfide particle surfaces using pump–probe Raman spectroscopy, looking for possible applications for solar-energy. He noticed that the optical properties of the crystals changed after leaving them for 24 hours. He attributed this change in band gap energy to Ostwald ripening when the crystal increased in size. Brus provided the theoretical framework for understanding the behavior of quantum dots in terms of quantum size effects. He identified the connection between the particle size of semiconductors and the wavelength of the light they emit, now known as the Brus equation.

Brus tried to contact researchers in the Soviet Union. It was in 1990 that he finally met Alexey Ekimov and Alexander Efros, who had first developed the semiconductor nanocrystals in glass in 1981 under more rudimentary conditions, however their research was not available in the United States.

At Bell Labs, Brus worked with postdoc researchers Paul Alivisatos and Moungi Bawendi in a research project with organometallic synthetic chemist Michael L. Steigerwald on reducing the size of the quantum dots.

Death

Brus died of myelodysplastic syndrome in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York on January 11, 2026, at the age of 82.

Awards and honors

Brus was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1998, a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2004, and was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

He received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Association of Rice University Alumni in 2010. He was co-recipient of the 2006 R. W. Wood Prize of the Optical Society of America "for the discovery of nanocrystal quantum dots and pioneering studies of their electronic and optical properties" shared with Alexander Efros and Alexey Ekimov. He also received the inaugural Kavli Prize for nanoscience along with Sumio Iijima in 2008 for "their large impact in the development of the nanoscience field of the zero and one dimensional nanostructures in physics, chemistry and biology". In 2009 he was awarded the Willard Gibbs Award "for his leading role in the creation of chemical quantum dots". Brus was chosen for the 2010 NAS Award in Chemical Sciences. In 2012 he received the Franklin Institute's Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science, and was selected as a Clarivate Citation laureate in Chemistry "for discovery of colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals (quantum dots)".

In 2023, Brus was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with Ekimov and Moungi Bawendi "for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots". Bawendi had worked as a postdoc with Brus, when they were in Bell Labs.

He was inducted as a 2025 fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.