Wiman, Karl

Karl Wyman was the fourth of five children in the family of N. Orr Wyman and Alison Wyman . He spent his childhood in Oregon , USA. Shortly before Wiman moved to the seventh grade of the school, the family moved to Corvalis in order to allow children to attend better schools. Despite the fact that Corvalis has a population of only 25 thousand inhabitants, it houses the University of Oregon.

After high school, he becomes a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . After completing a general course of lectures, he transferred to Stanford University in the department of Theodore Hensch , from whom he defended his thesis in 1977 . After that, he works at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and becomes there in 1979 as an assistant professor . Here he meets Sarah Gilbert, who was a student who worked with him. In 1984 , he transferred to the University of Colorado at Boulder and married Sarah Gilbert, who by then had already defended her thesis. In 1987 , he is a professor of physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

In the Hensch group, Wiman was engaged in precision measurements of the wavelengths of the spectral lines of hydrogen . The topic of his dissertation was measuring the Lamb shift of the 1s level, and the isotope shift of the 1s-2s transition using polarization spectroscopy . Based on his experience in the field of precision spectroscopy, he wanted to study at the University of Michigan the atomic parity violation predicted by the theory of electroweak interaction . Very quickly, he realized that cesium , rather than hydrogen , was more suitable for these purposes. Successful measurements in 1985 brought him recognition of the scientific community.

In connection with these precision experiments, already in 1984 Wiman was engaged in laser cooling and laser traps. At first he was interested in this only in connection with the improvement of his measurement method. However, he soon realized that in this way it is possible to study the behavior of atoms at very low temperatures and to produce a Bose-Einstein condensate . In 1995 , together with Eric Cornell , he succeeded. For this achievement, he was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics (together with Eric Cornell and Wolfgang Ketterle ).

• 1990 - Guggenheim Scholarship ^[2]
• 1993 - Ernest Lawrence Prize in Physics
• 1994 - from the American Physical Society
• 1995 - Elected to the US National Academy of Sciences
• 1995 - from the Society of Optical and Quantum Electronics
• 1996 - Richtmeier Memorial Award from the American Physics Teachers Association
• 1996 - Fritz London Award for Low Temperature Physics from the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Physics
• 1996 - from the American Association for the Advancement of Science
• 1997 - King Faisal International Award
• 1997 - Bonfils-Staanton Foundation Science Award
• 1998 - Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 1998 - Lorenz Medal from the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 1999 - Wood Award from the Optical Society
• 1999 - from the American Physical Society
• 2000 - Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics from the Franklin Institute
• 2001 - Nobel Prize in Physics
• 2004 - National Professor of the Year according to the Carnegie Endowment for the Development and Support of Education
• 2007 - Oersted Medal
• 2009 -

• E.A. Cornell, K.E. Wyman . “Bose-Einstein condensation in a rarefied gas. The first 70 years and several recent experiments. ” Nobel lecture // Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk , Volume 173, Issue 12, December 2003
• Information from the Nobel Committee website
• Karl Wiman's Blog at ScientificBlogging.com
• Wiman's Homepage at the University of Colorado