Peter Lu

Peter James Lu, PhD, is a post-doctoral research fellow at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He works in the Department of Physics and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Lu is well known for his fascinating discoveries about old patterns and tools used by people long ago. He found special designs called quasicrystal patterns, similar to girih tiles, in medieval Islamic architecture. He also studied early precision machines in ancient China and discovered that people in neolithic China were the first to use diamond. His work helps us understand how smart and creative people were thousands of years ago.

Early life and education

Peter Lu was born in Cleveland, Ohio and grew up in West Chester, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. As a child, he loved collecting rocks and minerals, which helped him win gold medals at the National Science Olympiad four times.

He went to Princeton University and studied physics. There, he worked with professors on interesting science projects, including writing a paper about special shapes called quasicrystals. He finished his studies at Princeton with top honors and then went to Harvard University for more advanced learning.

Girih tiles and quasicrystals in medieval Islamic architecture

Peter Lu discovered that special geometric tiles, called girih tiles, were used to create beautiful patterns in old buildings from medieval Islamic architecture. Working with Paul Steinhardt, he showed how these tiles were used to make very complicated designs, like those found on the walls of the Darb-i Imam shrine built in 1453 in Isfahan, Iran. This was exciting because it revealed a simple way that builders could have created such intricate patterns, and it also showed that people in the past had created shapes known as quasicrystalline patterns, long before scientists in the West discovered similar designs, called Penrose tilings, in the 1970s.

Technology in ancient Chinese art

Peter Lu discovered that ancient Chinese craftsmen used special machines to create spiral patterns on jade rings over 2,500 years ago. These patterns matched a precise mathematical shape called the Archimedes spiral, showing that the craftsmen had advanced tools much earlier than previously thought.

Lu also found evidence that ancient Chinese people were the first to use diamonds, as early as 2,500 BC. They used tiny diamonds to polish special stone axes, which were made from a mineral called corundum. This discovery showed that diamonds were used much earlier than anyone knew before.

Other contributions

Peter Lu has worked with scientists like Motohiro Yogo and Charles Marshall to study ancient fossils. They discovered that some ideas about how life recovers after big changes might be wrong because of missing information in fossil records.

Lu also studied tiny particles in liquids, both in labs and on the International Space Station, with David A. Weitz. In 2008, he helped solve a long-standing question about how these particles clump together. His work has led to new ways to watch these particles and even living cells in detail using special microscopes.