Margaret M. Murnane
Margaret M. Murnane

Source: © Optica
Margaret Murnane is a Fellow of JILA and OSA and a faculty member in Physics at the University of Colorado, USA,. She runs a trans-disciplinary research group with her husband, Henry Kapteyn. She received her B.S and M.S. degrees from University College Cork, Ireland, and her Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley, USA. She joined the faculty at Washington State University in 1990. In 1996, she moved to the University of Michigan and in 1999 to the University of Colorado, USA. Henry and Margaret also co-founded KMLabs, the first laser company to commercially offer 10fs Ti:sapphire lasers as well as coherent high harmonic systems.
Murnane has served on OSA's Board of Directors and Strategic Planning Council. She has been active in several topical meeting program committees, the Frontiers in Optics Program Committee, and was an editor for Optics Letters. She was awarded OSA's R.W. Wood Prize in 2010 and the Frederic Ives Medal/Jarus Quinn Prize in 2017.
I quickly became intrigued with laser science when I realized that lasers could be used to explore the frontiers of science across many disciplines, as well as to develop important technological applications.
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Document Created: 26 July 2023
Last Updated: 17 July 2025