Wolfgang
Ketterle
Year
2000
Subject
Physics
Award
Benjamin Franklin Medal
Affiliation
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge | Cambridge, Massachusetts
Citation
With Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman, for their epoch-making experimental confirmation of the 1925 prediction by Satyendra Bose and Albert Einstein, who claimed on theoretical grounds that a dilute gas can condense into a large quantum-mechanical system and display properties that are usually found only on an atomic or molecular scale.
Working independently of Carl Wieman and Eric Cornell (the two other winners of the Physics award), Wolfgang Ketterle also succeeded in creating and discovering a formerly hypothetical state of matter, the Bose-Einstein condensate.
Ketterle was born in Heidelberg, Germany in 1957 and spent his early life and scientific pursuits there. Ketterle moved to the United States in 1990 to engage in postdoctoral research at MIT, where he continues his work today as a researcher and professor.
Information as of 2001