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.