Carl Weiman shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001 with Eric Cornell and Wolfgang Ketterle "for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates." Carl Weiman, along with his shared Nobel prize winners, was one of the first to create a Bose Einstein Condensate (BEC), a super cold, not dense gas in which the particles all occupy the same quantum state. This allows one to observe quantum behavior on the macroscopic scale. His work includes designing experiments in which he cools atoms to 100 billionths of a degree above absolute zero. He notes in his Nobel Lecture that BECs can never occur outside the lab because the temperatures needed are in the 100 billionths of a Kelvin and the coldest naturally occurring place we know of, the depths of outer space, is about 3 Kelvin. Weiman is also involved with improving science education.
