Laurens W. Molenkamp
[2] 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.He was a co-recipient of the American Physical Society 2012 Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize[3] for his experimental observation of the quantum spin Hall effect, opening up the field of topological insulators.Thomson Reuters included him on their annual prediction shortlist [7] 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.