Eric Betzig is a Professor of Molecular and Cell biology, the Eugene D. Commins Presidential Chair in Experimental Physics, a Senior Fellow at the Janelia Research Campus, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. His Ph.D. thesis at Cornell University and subsequent work at AT&T Bell Labs involved the development of near-field optics – an early form of super-resolution microscopy. He left academia in 1995 to work in the machine tool industry, but returned ten years later when he and friend, Harald Hess, built the first super-...
My interests center on collective phenomena and ordering in condensed matter and biological systems. In the past, I have worked on high-temperature superconductivity, quantum antiferromagnetism, the fullerenes, and liquid crystals. My current interests include the theoretical and computational modeling of molecular, cellular, and collective properties of biological systems, as well as the behavior of quantum fluids like cold atomic gases and high temperature superconductors.
Current Projects
The mammalian visual system is a complex system that is "self -organizing," in the sense...
