Peter James Lu, PhD (陸述義) is a post-doctoral research fellow in the Department of Physics and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has been recognized for his discoveries of quasicrystal patterns (girih tiles) in medieval Islamic architecture, early precision compound machines in ancient China, and man's first use of diamond in neolithic China. Early life and education Lu was born in Cleveland, Ohio and grew up in the Philadelphia suburb of West Chester, Pennsylvania. His early childhood interest in rockhounding led to his winning national gold medals in the "Rocks, Minerals, and Fossils" event at four National Science Olympiad tournaments. Lu graduated from B. Reed Henderson high school in West Chester in 1996. Lu matriculated at Princeton University in September, 1996, and was advised in his first year by geology professor Kenneth S. Deffeyes. He studied organic chemistry with Maitland Jones, Jr., with whom Lu published his first paper on his freshman summer research project about carbenes. As an undergraduate physics major, he wrote his fourth-year senior thesis with Prof. Paul J. Steinhardt on the search for natural quasicrystals, later published in Physical Review Letters. Lu graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with an A.B. in physics from Princeton in June, 2000. In September, 2000, he began his graduate studies at Harvard University, receiving an A. M. in physics in 2002. In 2005, Lu presented a set of lectures in Turkmenistan. Since 2007, Lu has served on the national advisory committee of the Science Olympiad. Lu completed his Ph.D. in physics in 2008. Girih tiles and quasicrystals in medieval Islamic architecture Lu's most widely publicized work involves his discovery of the girih tiles, a set of fundamental geometric tiles used to create a wide range of patterns in medieval Islamic architecture. In collaboration with Paul Steinhardt, he demonstrated their use to create quasicrystal tilings on the walls of Darb-i Imam shrine (1453 A.D.) in Isfahan, Iran. The finding was considered a significant breakthrough by demonstrating a simple and straightforward method that could have been used by common workers to create extremely complicated patterns using girih tiles, and by identifying a medieval example of quasicrystalline patterns, which were not widely known to or understood by the West until the discovery of Penrose tilings by Roger Penrose in the 1970s. For its timely scientific and political implications, Lu and Steinhardt's work on