Wolfgang Ketterle

Physics

Wolfgang Ketterle shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001 with Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman "for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates." Wolfgang Ketterle began his physics career working in atomic spectroscopy. He 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. He and his team continue to work on the macroscopic manifestations of quantum mechanics displayed in BECs.