Dr. Steven Chu, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, will present the May 2009 Karl Taylor Compton Lecture. Dr. Chu is a co-winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work in methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light. He is the first Nobel laureate to serve in a U.S. cabinet position. Until his DOE appointment he was a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The Compton lecture series, named in honor of Karl Taylor Compton, MIT's ninth president, began in 1957 and aims to give the MIT community direct contact with the important ideas of our times and with people who have contributed much to modern thought. For more information about Dr. Chu see the DOE leadership webpage or his autobiography on the Nobel Prize website.