Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman

Nobel Laureate and University of Colorado Distinguished Professor of Physics Carl Wieman, who created a new form of matter called the Bose-Einstein condensate, delivered two lectures on his work at Old Dominion University on Sept. 17-18. He also conducted an open forum for K-12 teachers, principals, university students and faculty.

Carl Wieman

Wieman's first talk, "Bose-Einstein Condensation: Quantum Weirdness at the Lowest Temperature in the Universe," was held in the Ted Constant Convocation Center.

During his second lecture on "The Circuitous Route of a Scientific Discovery," Wieman traced his 15-year path leading to the first creation in 1995 of Bose-Einstein condensation, often considered one of the major discoveries of that decade.

Wieman introduced his talk, "The path began with an effort to save money on lab equipment and led to the creation of the coldest temperatures ever produced. I will focus on the important roles luck, curiosity, poverty and playing had in this research, as well as the importance of the social side of science in determining research directions and success."

Background: In 1924, Einstein predicted that a gas would undergo a dramatic transformation at a sufficiently low temperature, now known as Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). In 1988, Wieman's research group cooled atoms to 100 millionths of a degree above absolute zero, the coldest temperature ever achieved up to that time. In 1995, his group observed the transformation by cooling a gas sample to the unprecedented temperature of less than 100 billionths of a degree above absolute zero. The BEC state is a novel form of matter in which a large number of atoms lose their individual identities and behave as a single quantum entity, the "superatom." This entity is the atom analogue to laser light and, although large enough to be easily seen and manipulated, exhibits the non-intuitive quantum behavior normally important only at much tinier scales. The study and use of the curious properties of BEC has now become an important sub-field of physics.

Wieman has used laser light for the cooling and trapping of atoms and pioneered the use of inexpensive semiconductor diode lasers, the type used in compact disc players, for this purpose. He has carried out other research on laser spectroscopy of atoms, including measurements of the lack of mirror reversal symmetry, or "parity violation," in atoms.

Wieman received his bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and doctorate from Stanford University. He is currently a fellow at JILA, a research institute operated jointly by the University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Wieman has received numerous awards, including the Department of Energy's Lawrence Prize, the Davisson-Germer Prize of the American Physical Society, the Fritz London Prize, the Schawlow Prize for Laser Science, the Lorentz Medal of the Netherlands Royal Academy, the King Faisal International Prize in Science and the Benjamin Franklin Medal. He is an elected member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He has been involved in innovations in undergraduate physics education and has given many presentations to high school classes and general audiences. He developed a substantial portion of the award-winning Physics 2000 Web site that presents physics online, and he has developed a popular physics course for nonscientists.

Wieman is a member of the National Task Force on Undergraduate Physics jointly formed by the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Physics and the American Association of Physics Teachers to improve undergraduate physics education. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Undergraduate Science Education and plays a leading role in recent efforts at the National Academy of Sciences to improve physics education.

His contributions to both research and innovations in education have been recognized by the Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award of the American Association of Physics Teachers and the first Distinguished Teaching Scholar Award by the director of the National Science Foundation.

Other stories in College News Section..
Astronomer Robert Kirshner Guest Lecturer President's Lecture Series
Dean's Lecture Series
Dean Receives International Fiber Society Founders Award
Fund the Sciences!
ODU's Engineering And Computational Sciences Building is the First LEED-CERTIFIED HIGHER-ED Building in Virginia

Phyllis Brown, Editor
College of Sciences Newsletter
SciNews@odu.edu
(757) 683-3280
(757) 683-3034 (fax)