(1949–    ), German-born American physicist and Nobel laureate. Born in Frankfurt am Main, he was educated at the University of Frankfurt and at the University of Stuttgart, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1977. He joined the research staff of Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J., in 1978. Störmer served as supervisor of Bell's Physical Research Laboratory from 1992 to 1998, when he became a professor at Columbia University in New York City.

Störmer's main research was on condensed-matter physics, with an emphasis on semiconductors. While at Bell, he worked with Daniel C. Tsui, a Chinese-American physicist, on research based on the integer quantum Hall effect discovered by the German physicist Klaus von Klitzing in 1980. In 1982, Störmer and Tsui used temperatures near ABSOLUTE ZERO, (q.v.) in a magnetic field much stronger than that available to von Klitzing. In their experiments, they found that a decrease in electrical resistance (and a corresponding increase in voltage) did not occur in steps as observed by von Klitzing but in fractional steps. Theoretically, such fractional results were thought unobtainable. Within a year the American physicist Robert B. Laughlin, however, offered an explanation, namely, that under certain circumstances groups of electrons, which he called quasi-particles, formed a quantum fluid similar to the quantum fluids in liquid helium (see SUPERFLUIDITY,) and in superconductive materials and behaved as if fractionally charged. In the late 1990s other researchers directly verified the existence of quasi-particles.

In 1998, Störmer, Tsui, and Laughlin were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics “for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations.”

See also ELECTRON,; ELEMENTARY PARTICLES,; RESISTANCE,; SEMICONDUCTOR,; SUPERCONDUCTIVITY,.