| Wolfgang Ketterle Born: 21-Oct-1957
Birthplace: Heidelberg, Germany
Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Physicist Nationality: Germany
Executive summary: Bose-Einstein condensates In 1995, German physicist Wolfgang Ketterle created a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) with sodium atoms. BECs are a previously unknown ultracold state of matter, occurring only at temperatures approaching absolute zero or when their common de Broglie wavelengths exceed the interparticle distances, causing all the particles to have overlapping quantum states and become attractively interactive. Ketterle shared the 2001 Nobel Prize for Physics with Eric A. Cornell and Carl E. Wieman, who conducted similar work independently and concurrently. Ketterle, who was only 44 years old when he won the highest honor in science, has used BECs to study compressibility and ultracold phenomena, and has also studied atom cooling and trapping, combustion diagnostics with lasers, spectroscopy of helium hydride and triatomic hydrogen, and spin relaxation in disordered systems. Brother: Günter (b. 1956)
Sister: Monika (b. 1961)
Wife: Gabriele Sauer (high school sweetheart, m. 1986, div., two sons, one daughter)
Son: Jonas (b. 1986)
Daughter: Johanna (b. 1988)
Son: Holger (b. 1992)
University: University of Heidelberg (transferred)
University: MS equiv. Physics, Technical University of Munich (1982)
University: PhD Physics, University of Munich (1986)
Scholar: Physics, Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Garching, Germany (1982-88)
Scholar: Mmolecular Spectroscopy, University of Heidelberg (1989-90)
Scholar: Atom Cooling and Trapping, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1990-93)
Teacher: Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1993-97)
Professor: Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1997-98)
Professor: John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics, MIT (1998-)
APS I.I. Rabi Prize in Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics 1997
GPS Gustav-Hertz Prize 1997
Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics 1999
Fritz London Memorial Prize 1999
Benjamin Franklin Medal 2000 (Franklin Institute)
Nobel Prize for Physics 2001 (with Eric A. Cornell and Carl E. Wieman)
French Legion of Honor Officer, 2002
Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Knight Commander's Cross, 2002
MIT Killian Award 2004
Volkswagen Internship (1980)
American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1999
American Physical Society Foreign Member, 1997
Bavarian Academy of Sciences 2003
European Academy of Arts and Sciences
Federation of American Scientists Board of Sponsors
German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
German Association of University Professors
German Physical Society
Institute of Physics Foreign Member
National Academy of Sciences Foreign Member, 2002
Optical Society of America Foreign Member, 2006
Science Debate 2008
World Technology Network
Boston Marathon 2014
German Ancestry Paternal
Polish Ancestry Maternal
Author of books:
Spectroscopy of Triatomic Hydrogen Molecule and the Heliumhydrid (1986)
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