Ferenc Krausz

Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics

Ferenc Krausz is a Hungarian-Austrian physicist, director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, and professor of experimental physics at LMU Munich whose team generated and measured the first isolated attosecond light pulse in 2001, an experimental milestone widely regarded as the birth of attophysics. By using these pulses to capture the motion of electrons inside atoms in real time, Krausz transformed attosecond science from a theoretical possibility into a working experimental discipline, earning a share of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics alongside Pierre Agostini and Anne L'Huillier. Beyond fundamental science, Krausz is an unusually entrepreneurial physicist: he co-founded Femtolasers Produktions GmbH, a Vienna-based ultrafast laser manufacturer later acquired into the Newport/MKS Instruments portfolio, and he established the Center for Molecular Fingerprinting, which develops laser-based infrared spectroscopy of blood plasma as a tool for early cancer detection. His research programs are supported by European Research Council Synergy and Advanced Grants and by the Max Planck Society, and he holds an extensive patent portfolio spanning ultrafast laser sources, attosecond metrology, and biomedical diagnostics. This combination of a large, well-funded laboratory and active commercialization makes Krausz both a major purchaser of high-end laser, optics, and detection instrumentation and a builder of the very companies that supply that market.