“Only connect” is the most famous line in the British novelist E. M. Forster’s writings.
Forster was urging the readers of his book Howard’s End to make personal progress by linking their rational side to their emotional side, but “only connect” has taken on a broader meaning in today’s intellectual climate. Forster’s advice has come to signify applying insights from one field to address problems in different and ostensibly unrelated fields.
A compelling example of this associative process was detailed in a presentation by Dr. Jun Ye of NIST’s Physical Measurement Laboratory’s Quantum Physics Division and JILA, formerly known as the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (https://jila.colorado.edu/) on August 31, 2023, for the recently inaugurated Lunch and Learn series sponsored by the Department of Commerce’s Office of Learning & Development (OL&D).
The cross-bureau session began with a description by NIST Chief Learning Officer Christopher Currens of the breadth of NIST’s mission and the range of technologies NIST advances to fulfill that mission.
Mr. Currens described Dr. Ye, who won the 2022 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, as “one of the most cited researchers in experimental physics in the world today.”
Dr. Ye’s address, “From Atomic Clock to Breath Analyzer – Extreme Sensing at the Quantum Limit,” revealed how his research of more than 20 years on the atomic clock contributed to the development of a breathalyzer that can detect the SARS-CoV-2 infection that causes COVID-19.
The atomic clock’s processes were summarized, and NIST’s decades-long pursuit of a stable laser to measure the oscillation of electrons around an atom’s nucleus was illustrated. Dr. Ye described how the optical frequency comb developed by NIST measures the frequency of light wave ..
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