Steven Chu

In honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, here is some more information about some famous Asian Americans that you might not know much about.

Steven Chu was born in St. Louis, Missouri. As a child, he loved to build things and even hoarded his lunch money to buy parts for his homemade rockets.  and went on to earn a Ph.D. in physics from The University of California, Berkeley.

After Berkeley, he joined Bell Labs where he and colleagues carried out his Nobel Prize-winning laser cooling work. Dr. Chu received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1997. After Bell Labs, he became a physics professor at Stanford University, where he and colleagues initiated the Bio-X program. The Bio-X program focuses on research in biology and medicine. In 2004, he was appointed as the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a US Dept. of Energy National Laboratory. This lab was a center for research into biofuels and solar energy. He started the initiative to develop methods of harnessing solar power as a source of renewable energy for transportation.

Dr. Chu was sworn in as the Secretary of Energy on January 21, 2009, and was the first person appointed to the US Cabinet after winning a Nobel prize. He was also the second Chinese American to be a member of the US Cabinet. He was also the designated survivor during the State of the Union address on February 12, 2013.