A New Kilogram in 2018: The Biggest Revolution in Metrology since the French Revolution

The 1985 Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Klaus von Klitzing, will give the talk entitled A New Kilogram in 2018: The Biggest Revolution in Metrology since the French Revolution at 19:00pm in Bizkaia Aretoa (Bilbao) on 28th September, within the framework of Passion For Knowledge 2016. Having obtained his doctorate from Braunschweig University in 1972, von Klitzing has built up a fruitful career in the world of science, working for Oxford University, the Grenoble High Magnetic Field Laboratory and the IBM Research Laboratory in Yorktown Heights. In 1985, von Klitzing was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics thanks to the discovery of the quantum Hall effect, enabling the development of nano-electronic devices.

The talk will explain that Metrology- the science of measurements- is responsible for the international uniformity and precision in standards. Today, the seven units for meter, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole, and candela of our international system of units (SI units) are used as a basis to express everything in nature by numbers and units. The first global system of units was introduced during the French Revolution with prototypes for the meter and kilogram. Even today, an artefact of platinum iridium is by definition the international unit of mass but this standard is not stable enough. Therefore, the General Conference on Weights and Measures at his last meeting in November 2014 encouraged the international metrology community to complete all work until July 2017 necessary for a replacement of the current SI by a new system based on constants of nature. The quantum Hall effect (Nobel Prize 1985) plays a crucial role in this development, not only for the electrical units but also for the kilogram.