The Department of Chemistry at Texas
A&M University-Kingsville has selected Dr. Carl Wieman, recipient
of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics, to deliver the 24th annual
Garland Lecture at 2 p.m. Tuesday, April 6, in the Biology Earth
Sciences auditorium.
The title of Wieman’s talk is,
“Bose-Einstein Condensate: Quantum Weirdness at the Lowest
Temperature in the Universe.” Wieman will discuss a new
form of matter he helped create called Bose-Einstein Condensate
(BEC).
Wieman is a Distinguished Professor
of Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is also
a Fellow of JILA (formerly the Joint Institute for Laboratory
Astrophysics), a physics research institute operated jointly by
the University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards
and Technology.
Wieman is the recipient of a host of
awards and honors for his work, most recently the 2001 Nobel Prize
in Physics. Others honors include the Department of Energy’s
Lawrence Prize in Physics, the King Faisal International Prize
in Science, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics and the Davisson-Germer
Prize in Atomic Physics of the American Physical Society.
Wieman also received the first Distinguished Teaching Scholar
Award from the director of the National Science Foundation.
Through most of the 1980s, Wieman worked
with his research group to cool and trap atoms using inexpensive,
semiconductor diode lasers; these are the variety used in compact
disc players. By 1988, Wieman and his group were cooling atoms
to 100 millionth of a degree above absolute zero, the coldest
temperature achieved up to that time. Starting in 1990, Wieman
and his group would go on to collaborate with Dr. Eric Cornell,
a JILA Fellow, senior scientist for the National Institute of
Standards and Technology and professor adjoint for the physics
department of the University of Colorado at Boulder. The team
successfully cooled atoms to a few billionths of a degree above
absolute zero, and from that achievement came BEC, which has become
the source of a new field of international physics research.
In addition to his research work, Wieman
was a developer of the award-winning Physics2000 website and a
physics course for nonscientists. He has given many presentations
to both high school classes and general audiences.
Wieman is an elected member of both
the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences. He is an active member of the National Task Force
on Undergraduate Physics, and a member of the National Academy
of Sciences Committee on Undergraduate Science Education.
· An Abstract:
Bose-Einstein Condensation: Quantam Weirdness at the Lowest Temperature
in the Universe
· More
information on Dr. Carl Wieman and his research at The University
of Colorado
· Download
Dr. Carl Wieman's Lecture flyer
