Physicists who 'made atoms sing' win Nobel
Physicists who 'made atoms sing' win Nobel
Agencies, Stockholm
Three physicists who "made atoms sing" won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for freezing matter into a new state that may help make microscopic computers and revolutionize aircraft guidance.
"This year's Nobel laureates have succeeded -- they have caused atoms to 'sing in unison' -- thus discovering a new state of matter," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement.
Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman of the United States and Germany's Wolfgang Ketterle won the prestigious US$1 million prize for creating a form of matter that is extremely pure and coherent, in the same way that lasers are a pure kind of light.
The trio were awarded the 2001 prize "for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates," according to the citation.
Cornell, 39, is a senior scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the United States and professor adjoint at the University of Colorado, while Wieman, 50, is a physics professor at the same university.
The pair conducted their research together, while Ketterle, a 43-year-old physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, worked independently. The three succeeded in achieving Bose-Einstein condensation in 1995, building on the theory developed by Indian physicist S.N. Bose in 1924 and later extended by Albert Einstein.
Their technology can create atom lasers which could in the future draw microscopic computer circuits many times tinier than the smallest in use today, allowing extremely fast, powerful and compact computers to be built.
Atom lasers could also allow extremely accurate guidance systems and gravity meters, pinpointing the position of airliners and spacecraft to within a few centimeters.
The three will receive their prize, along with the other Nobel laureates, from the hands of Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf at the official ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death in 1896 of the prizes' creator, Swedish scholar and inventor Alfred Nobel.
On Monday, the Nobel Medicine Prize was the first of this year's Nobel prizes to be announced.
Leland Hartwell of the United States and Paul Nurse and Timothy Hunt, both of Britain, were honored for their discoveries about how cells divide, which have opened dramatic new possibilities for curing cancer.
On Wednesday, the Nobel Prizes for Chemistry and Economics will be announced, to be followed on Thursday by the Literature Prize. The Nobel week will conclude Friday with the prestigious Peace Prize.