The Nobel Prize in Physics 2001       The density of the atomic cloud is shown, with temperature decreasing from left to right. The high peak, the Bose-Einstein condensate, emerges above the other atoms. The picture is from the JILA laboratory.       …coldest! Eric A. Cornell joined Wieman as a co-worker…

  The Nobel Prize in Physics 2001         To the left, Ketterle’s first interference pattern. The interference pattern between two expanding condensates resembles that formed by throwing two stones into still water.     Large condensates and interference patterns Wolfgang Ketterle came to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1990. He…

Presentation Speech by Professor Sune Svanberg of the , December 10, 2001. Translation of the Swedish text. Professor Sune Svanberg delivering the Presentation Speech for the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics at the Stockholm Concert Hall. Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Honoured Nobel Laureates, Ladies and Gentlemen, Three quarters of a century ago,…

  The Nobel Prize in Physics 2001       The coldest planetary body in the Solar System is Triton, a moon of Neptune. (-235 °C or 38 K)   The lowest temperatures in nature have been measured at Vostok, Antarctica. (-89 °C or 183 K)     Absolute Zero Physicists use a scale for temperature…

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I was born in Palo Alto, California in 1961. My parents were completing graduate degrees at Stanford. Two years later we moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, the city I consider to be my hometown. My father was a professor of civil engineering at MIT, and my mother taught high school English. The family, including my younger…

  The Nobel Prize in Physics 2001     Further reading web site with animations, questions and answers etc.: The Bose-Einstein Condensate, by E.A. Cornell and C.E. Wieman, Scientific American, March 1998, p. 26. Bose-Einstein Condensation, by Ch. Townsend, W. Ketterle and S. Stringari, Physics World, March 1997, p. 29. Experimental Studies of Bose-Einstein Condensation,…

  The Nobel Prize in Physics 2001         Cooling of alkali atoms towards BEC   Particles or Waves? Both! Light is often described as waves, but it can also be described as a stream of light particles, photons. Matter is also characterised by this dualism. In the 1920s, Louis de Broglie suggested…

I was born on March 26, 1951 in the small town of Corvallis, Oregon. A number of years earlier my newly wed parents N. Orr and Alison Wieman, like somewhat belated pioneers, had driven their decrepit car across the country to settle deep in the forests of the Oregon coastal range. My father began working…

   The Nobel Prize in Physics 2001     The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2001 jointly to Eric A. Cornell, Wolfgang Ketterle and Carl E. Wieman “for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties…