Nobel laureate and University of Colorado at Â鶹¹ÙÍø Distinguished Professor Carl Wieman will give the commencement address at the spring ceremony on Friday, May 10, at 9:30 a.m. in Folsom Stadium.
Wieman, with Senior Scientist Eric Cornell of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, received the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics for their landmark 1995 creation of the world's first Bose-Einstein condensate, a new form of matter created by cooling atoms to a few hundred billionths of a degree above absolute zero.
Wieman and Cornell shared the prize with Wolfgang Ketterle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
A distinguished professor of physics, Wieman has taught at CU-Â鶹¹ÙÍø since 1984. He has been active in improving undergraduate physics education, including developing and teaching CU-Â鶹¹ÙÍø's introductory physics course for nonscientists. His teaching efforts have been recognized by the first National Science Foundation Director's Award for Distinguished Teaching Scholars. He also is a fellow of JILA, a joint institute of CU-Â鶹¹ÙÍø and NIST.
Predicted in 1924 by Albert Einstein, who built on the work of Satyendra Nath Bose, a Bose-Einstein condensate occurs when the wavelengths of individual atoms begin to overlap and behave in identical fashion, forming a "superatom." The "superatom" occurs when laboratory apparatus is used to chill a group of atoms to just a few hundred billionths of a degree above absolute zero or minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit.
The condensate allows scientists to study the strange and extremely small world of quantum physics as if they are looking through a giant magnifying glass. Its creation established a new branch of atomic physics that has proved to be a valuable source of scientific discoveries.