Oct 9 2001
From The Space Library
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics to former NASA scientist Wolfgang Ketterle and two other scientists, Eric A. Cornell and Carl E. Wieman. Ketterle was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Principal Investigator for NASA’s Office of Biological and Physical Research (OBPR) in Washington, DC. The three scientists received the Nobel Prize for their work in discovering a new state of matter called Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), named after the two physicists who had made the initial theoretical calculations of such matter. BEC consists of atomic particles that all have the same energy and that researchers can oscillate in a controlled manner. Cornell and Wieman had created a pure condensate of rubidium atoms, and Ketterle had independently produced BEC with sodium atoms. However, Ketterle’s condensates had also enabled further investigation of the new type of matter, because his condensates contained more atoms than those of Cornell and Wieman. In addition, Ketterle had produced other research that further advanced understanding of the phenomenon. (Nobel Foundation, “The Nobel Prize in Physics 2001,” http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2001/press.html (accessed 23 November 2008).
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