CSEF Junior Division Finalists - Colorado Science and Engineering ...

Guest Speaker
Dr. Carl Wieman - Nobel Laureate
Dr. Carl Wieman with Dr. Eric Cornell
Bose-Einstein Condensation:
Quantum weirdness at the lowest temperature in the universe.
Carl Wieman is a Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado. He is also a Fellow of JILA,
an institute operated jointly by the University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Dr. Wieman was born on March 26, 1951 in Corvallis, Oregon. He spent most of his youth deep in the forests of the coastal
mountains of Oregon. He left there to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree
in 1973. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1977 and an honorary doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1997.
Wieman became interested in cooling and trapping atoms using laser light in the 1980s and pioneered the use of inexpensive
semiconductor diode lasers, the type used in compact disc players, for this purpose. In 1988, his group cooled atoms to 100 millionths
of a degree above absolute zero, the coldest temperature ever achieved.
In the late 1980's, Wieman to began to investigate the basic processes that limited the temperature to which atoms could be cooled.
That program of research evolved into a collaboration with Eric Cornell in 1990 to create a new form of matter proposed by Einstein
known as Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). They and their students carried out extensive development of novel cooling techniques
that allowed them to cool atoms to a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero. This resulted in the first Bose-Einstein
condensate in 1995. BEC research has now become a major international field of physics research. Currently Wieman is studying the
properties of this bizarre and novel form of matter.
Professor Wieman has also carried out other research on laser spectroscopy of atoms, most notably on the measurement of the tiny
lack of mirror reversal symmetry ("parity violation") in atoms. This work resulted in "table-top" experiments that probe the
fundamental forces of nature in ways that are competitive with those carried out at the largest particle accelerators.
Dr. Wieman's work has been recognized by many awards, including the DOE Lawrence Prize in Physics, the Davisson-Germer Prize
in Atomic Physics of the American Physical society, the F. London Prize for Low Temperature Physics, the Schawlow Prize for Laser
Science, the Lorentz medal of the Netherlands Royal Academy, the Richtmyer award of the American Association of Physics
Teachers, the King Faisal International Prize in Science, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics. He has been elected to the
National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In addition to his research activities, Wieman has been involved in innovations in science education, and has given many presentations
to high school classes and general audiences. Currently he is a member of the National Task Force on Undergraduate Physics
Revitalization. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Physics and Astronomy.
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