Once again, Stanford can claim some bragging rights for a Nobel Prize winner. Theodor W. Haensch, one of this year’s three laureates for physics, received one-fourth of the prestigious award on Tuesday. Haensch spent 16 years at Stanford between 1970 and 1986.

Haensch received the prize for his “contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique,” according to the Nobel Prize Web site.

Haensch spent 16 years at Stanford, initially as a North Atlantic Treaty Organization postdoctoral fellow and visiting scholar from 1970 to 1972 in the Nobel-prize-winning Arthur L. Schawlow lab. Haensch was an associate professor in 1972 and became a professor from 1975 to 1986. He was also thesis adviser to one of the 2001 Nobel physics winners, Carl E. Wieman, who is now a Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado.

“Stanford has long had a leading faculty in atomic and optical physics,” said Applied Physics and Materials Science and Engineering Prof. Emeritus Theodore Geballe. “[Haensch] was attracted to come here as a young scientist by Arthur Schawlow. He and Art did some ingenious and exciting experiments at Stanford and laid the groundwork for his Prize.”

Haensch returned to his native Germany in 1986 to direct the Max-Planck-Institut fur Quantenoptik and become a professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat. He has written more than 460 papers and holds about 20 patents.

“He continued to develop new ideas and expand the research after Art died,” Geballe said. “We tried hard to keep Ted here, but he got an offer back in Germany that we couldn’t match.”

Haensch’s work has contributed to the development of extremely accurate clocks and improved global positioning system (GPS) technology. It’s also made possible the measurement of frequencies with an accuracy of 15 digits.

His portion of the prize money is 2.5 million Swedish Kronor, approximately $320,000.

“I am so delighted to learn that Ted Haensch has won this year’s Nobel Prize based on work which had its roots in the 16 years he spent at Stanford,”` said Natural Science Prof. Richard N. Zare in an interview with the Stanford News Service.