Harindran Manoharan, PhD

Hari Manoharan is associate professor of Physics at Stanford University, where his research group uses scanning tunneling microscopy to manipulate matter at the atomic scale. Manoharan earned his undergraduate degree before completing his Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Princeton University, where his fellowship began in 1991. His graduate and postdoctoral work pioneered techniques for positioning individual atoms on surfaces with extraordinary precision. Among his most celebrated achievements is the demonstration of quantum mirage—an experiment in which the electronic density of states from a magnetic atom was projected to a remote, empty location inside an elliptical quantum corral of cobalt atoms arranged on a copper surface, a striking demonstration of quantum coherence at the nanoscale. This work was published in Nature in 2000 and became an iconic image of nanotechnology.