Professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. Back in the 1970's he pioneered techniques in femtosecond (that's 1 quadrillionth of a second!!) molecular spectroscopy. He has published avidly in this field since then. Using this technology, he has been able to directly probe the quantum nature of the chemical bond. For his amazing contributions in this field, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1999.