You can use the following code to get the most recent post by a given Author, just un-comment one of the two lines as appropriate. See the Codex for more info on WP_Query.
The Codex entry is pretty long, so scroll down to the Parameters section for more info on the various options you can filter your query with.
$query = new WP_Query(array(
// get most recent post by Author's nickname (not username!)
// 'author_name' => 'Joe'
// get most recent post by Author's ID
// 'author' => 7,
'posts_per_page' => 1,
));