Laurens W. Molenkamp is an experimental
condensed matter physicist. He received his Ph.D. in
physical chemistry from the
University of Groningen, and spent several years first with Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven and then as Associate Professor at the RWTH in Aachen. He came to the
University of Würzburg in 1999 and is now the Chair of Experimental Physics III and leads the II-VI MBE (
molecular beam epitaxy) unit. His research interests include quantum transport in nanostructures, semiconductor spintronics, and optical spectroscopy of semiconductors. He was a co-recipient of the
American Physical Society 2012
Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize for his experimental observation of the
quantum spin Hall effect, opening up the field of
topological insulators. Since 2012, he has been the Editor of the physics journal
Physical Review B. He was a 2013
Physics Frontiers Prize laureate (shortlisted for the
Fundamental Physics Prize). Thomson Reuters included him on their annual prediction shortlist for the 2014
Nobel Prize for Physics for his experimental research, with
Charles L. Kane and
Shoucheng Zhang, on the quantum spin Hall effect and topological insulators. ==Honors==