Huntingdon borough

The Nobel Physicist

Did you know a Nobel Prize in Physics has a Huntingdon County college behind it, and not for one generation but three?

William D. Phillips shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics with Steven Chu and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, a third each, for developing methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.

He started at Juniata College in the autumn of 1966. His mother and father had both been there before him, the first in their families to go to college at all, graduating in 1930 and 1936. They had never met. A Juniata professor who knew them both suggested to his father that he might call a young Juniata alumna and ask her out.

His Aunt Betty went to Juniata. So did his sister. So, later, did his younger brother Tom.

Phillips graduated in 1970, in what he called a hectic few weeks in which he and Jane graduated from their respective colleges, married, honeymooned and moved to Boston for MIT. Twenty-seven years later he was in Stockholm.

Nothing further from the county histories. The six histories held here end in 1913 and this story belongs to 1997, so there is no passage in them that bears on it. Rather than attach an unrelated page and let it look like corroboration, this story stands on the sources listed below.

Checked against the record. SOURCE UPGRADED from Wikipedia to two primary records: the Nobel Foundation's own API for the prize, and Phillips's autobiography published by the Nobel Foundation for everything about Juniata. CONFIRMED at the Nobel Foundation: the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded to Steven Chu, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William D. Phillips, one third each, with the citation "for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light" - which is the wording the page now uses rather than a paraphrase. CONFIRMED in his own words: he began at Juniata College in the autumn of 1966 and graduated in 1970. He describes Juniata as "a small school in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, founded and strongly influenced by the pacifist Church of the Brethren." ADDED, and it is much the better story: his parents were each the first in their families to go to college, both went to Juniata, and graduated in 1930 and 1936 without ever meeting - until a Juniata professor who knew them both suggested his father telephone a young Juniata alumna. His aunt, his sister and his younger brother all went there too. A page about a Nobel Prize was carrying only the graduate, and the county's actual claim is a family. A NAME TRAP WORTH RECORDING, because it nearly went the wrong way. "Juniata" appears twice in this autobiography meaning two different places. Phillips's father was born in 1907 in "Juniata, a community on the edge of Altoona" - a neighbourhood in BLAIR County, not the college and not this county. The connection was checked against the sentences that name Juniata COLLEGE and Huntingdon, not against the word on its own. Also from the record and not previously on the page: Phillips was born on 5 November 1948 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, so he is not a native of this county. The page no longer implies otherwise; the Juniata connection is the real one and it does not need him to have been born here.

Sources

Checked 2026-09-09 · County history, independently fact checked

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