Twenty-eight years ago today, on October 15, 1997 (September 14, 1997 lunar calendar), Chinese scholar Steven Chu won the Nobel Prize in Physics. After learning of the award, Steven Chu hugged his wife. On October 15, 1997, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that it would award the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics to Steven Chu, a Chinese professor at Stanford University in the United States, and two other American and legal scientists in recognition of their invention of methods for cooling and trapping atoms with lasers. Steven Chu is the fifth Chinese scholar to win the Nobel Prize after Yang Zhenning, Li Zhengdao, Ding Zhaozhong and Li Yuanzhe. Steven Chu was born in St. Louis, Missouri, USA in February 1948. His parents' ancestral homes are Taicang, Jiangsu and Tianjin, respectively. Both are doctors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1970, Chu graduated from the University of Rochester in New York with a bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics. In 1976, he received a doctorate in physics from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1983, he served as the director of the electronics research department at Bell Labs. In 1987, he moved to Stanford University as a professor of the physics department. Since 1990, he has been the chairperson of the physics department. In 1993, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.