Eric Allin Cornell (born December 19, 1961) is an American physicist who, along with Carl E. Wieman, was able to synthesize the first Bose–Einstein condensate in 1995. For their efforts, Cornell, Wieman, and Wolfgang Ketterle shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001.

Biography

Cornell was born in Palo Alto, California, where his parents were completing graduate degrees at nearby Stanford University. Two years later he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where his father was a professor of civil engineering at MIT. Here he grew up with his younger brother and sister, with year-long stints in Berkeley, California, and Lisbon, Portugal, accompanying his father whilst on sabbatical.

In Cambridge he attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. The year before his graduation he moved back to California with his mother and finished high school at San Francisco's Lowell High School, a local magnet school for academically talented students.

He is currently a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and a physicist (NIST fellow) at the United States Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards and Technology. His lab is located at JILA. He was awarded the Lorentz Medal in 1998 and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005.

Awards and honors

Cornell received multiple awards including the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001.

  • Ioannes Marcus Marci Medal for Molecular Spectroscopy, Ioannes Marcus Marci Spectroscopic Society, Czech Republic, 2012
  • Fellow, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2005
  • Nobel Prize in Physics, 2001
  • Member, National Academy of Sciences, 2000
  • Fellow, Optical Society of America, Elected 2000
  • R. W. Wood Prize, Optical Society of America, 1999
  • Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics, 1999
  • Lorentz Medal, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1998
  • Fellow, The American Physical Society, Elected 1997
  • I. I. Rabi Prize in Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, American Physical Society, 1997
  • King Faisal International Prize in Science, 1997
  • National Science Foundation Alan T. Waterman Award, 1997
  • Carl Zeiss Award, Ernst Abbe Fund, 1996
  • Fritz London Prize in Low Temperature Physics, 1996
  • Department of Commerce Gold Medal, 1996
  • Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering, 1996
  • Newcomb-Cleveland Prize, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1995–96
  • George Gamow Memorial Lecture, 1995
  • Samuel Wesley Stratton Award, National Institute of Science and Technology, 1995

Personal life

Cornell married Celeste Landry in 1995 mere months before the BEC experiment succeeded. Their first daughter was born in 1996, and their second daughter in 1998. Cornell has run in the Bolder Boulder several times since moving to Boulder in 1990, most recently in 2022.

See also

  • Timeline of low-temperature technology

References

Bibliography

  • Cornell Group webpage at the University of Colorado
  • Bose–Einstein Condensate website at the National Institute of Standards and Technology
  • Eric Allin Cornell Patents
  • including the Nobel Lecture December 8, 2001 Bose-Einstein Condensation in a Dilute Gas; The First 70 Years and Some Recent Experiments