Carl Wieman

Early life and education

Carl Wieman is remembered in physics for work that changed what the next generation was able to take for granted.

Carl Wieman was born at Corvallis in 1951. His recorded nationality is United States. He was educated at Corvallis High School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Twentieth-century science was collaborative, expensive and political: the questions were pursued by teams, and the answers had consequences that reached well past the laboratory.

Professional appointments

He held appointments at JILA, Stanford University and University of British Columbia, where the work centred on physics and science education.

Physics rewards the awkward question, and punishes the elegant answer that no instrument can confirm.

Interdisciplinary research

He did not stay inside one field: the work runs across physics and microbiology, which tells you as much about the era's training as about the person.

Working from United States shaped what was possible. Access to instruments, collections, journals and colleagues has always been geographic, and the history of science is partly a history of that inequality.

Scientific influence and honors

The honours are a fair index of how the work was received - Nobel Prize in Physics (2001), Lorentz Medal (1998) and Benjamin Franklin Medal (2000).

Read now, the significance is less in any single result than in the fact that the results held. Physics is cumulative, and a contribution counts if the next generation could stand on it.

Current status

Carl Wieman is still working, and the final assessment of his contribution has not been made - the ordinary condition of a living scientist.

Achievements

• Nobel Prize in Physics — 2001
• Lorentz Medal — 1998
• Benjamin Franklin Medal — 2000
• Held posts at JILA, Stanford University and University of British Columbia
• Educated at Corvallis High School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University
• Fields of research: physics and science education