Eric Allin Cornell

Eric Allin Cornell (born December 19, 1961) is an

American physicist who, along with Carl E. Wieman, Eric Allin Cornell
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 Cornell in June 2015
Cambridge, Massachusetts, where his father was a
Born December 19, 1961
professor of civil engineering at MIT. Here he grew up
Palo Alto, California, US
with his younger brother and sister, with year-long
stints in Berkeley, California, and Lisbon, Portugal, Alma mater Stanford University (BS)
Massachusetts Institute of
accompanying his father whilst on sabbatical.[1]
Technology (PhD)
In Cambridge he attended Cambridge Rindge and Known for Bose–Einstein condensation
Latin School. The year before his graduation he moved
Awards Fritz London Memorial Prize
back to California with his mother and finished high
(1996)
school at San Francisco's Lowell High School, a local
King Faisal International Prize in
magnet school for academically talented students.[1]
Science (1997)
After high school he enrolled at Stanford University, Lorentz Medal (1998)
where he was to meet his future wife, Celeste Landry.
R. W. Wood Prize (1999)
As an undergraduate he earned money as an assistant
Benjamin Franklin Medal in
in the various low-temperature physics groups on
Physics (2000)
campus. He was doing well both in his courses and his
jobs in the labs and seemed set for a career in physics. Nobel Prize in Physics (2001)
He however doubted whether he wished to pursue such Scientific career
a career, or rather a different one in literature or
Fields Physics
politics. Halfway through his undergraduate years he
Institutions University of Colorado Boulder
went to China and Taiwan for nine months to volunteer
National Institute of Standards
teaching conversational English and to study Chinese.
and Technology (NIST)
He returned to Stanford with the intent to study
JILA
physics. He graduated with honors and distinction in
1985.[1] Thesis Mass spectroscopy using single
ion cyclotron resonance (http://d
space.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/13
562) (1990)
For graduate school he returned to MIT. There he Doctoral David E. Pritchard
joined David Pritchard's group, which had a running advisor
experiment that tried to measure the mass of the
electron neutrino from the beta decay of tritium. Although he was unable to determine the mass of the
neutrino, Cornell did obtain his PhD in 1990.[1]

After obtaining his doctorate he joined Carl Wieman at the University of Colorado Boulder as a
postdoctoral researcher on a small laser cooling experiment. During his two years as a postdoc he came
up with a plan to combine laser cooling and evaporative cooling in a magnetic trap to create a Bose–
Einstein condensate (BEC). Based on his proposal he was offered a permanent position at JILA/NIST in
Boulder.[1] In 1995 Cornell and Wieman gave the University of Colorado's George Gamow Memorial
Lecture. For synthesizing the first Bose–Einstein condensate in 1995, Cornell, Wieman, and Wolfgang
Ketterle shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001. In 1997, Deborah S. Jin joined Cornell's group at
JILA, where she led the team that produced the fermionic condensate in 2003.[2]

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.[3]

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.[1]

In October 2004, his left arm and shoulder were amputated in an attempt to stop the spread of necrotizing
fasciitis. He was discharged from the hospital in mid-December, having recovered from the infection, and
returned to work part-time in April 2005.[4] Cornell has run in the Bolder Boulder several times since
moving to Boulder in 1990, most recently in 2022.[5]

See also
Timeline of low-temperature technology

References
1. Eric A. Cornell (2001). "Eric A. Cornell – Autobiography" (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/p
hysics/2001/cornell/auto-biography/). Nobel web. Retrieved 2010-03-22.
2. DeMarco, Brian; Bohn, John; Cornell, Eric (October 19, 2016). "Deborah S. Jin 1968-2016"
(https://doi.org/10.1038%2F538318a). Nature. 538 (7625): 318.
Bibcode:2016Natur.538..318D (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016Natur.538..318D).
doi:10.1038/538318a (https://doi.org/10.1038%2F538318a). PMID 27762370 (https://pubme
d.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27762370). S2CID 205091045 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:
205091045).
3. "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter C" (http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMe
mbers/ChapterC.pdf) (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 10 April
2011.
4. News Article (http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/3911587/detail.html) Archived (https://
web.archive.org/web/20110103201710/http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/3911587/de
tail.html) 2011-01-03 at the Wayback Machine from KMGH
5. Sandrock, Michael (June 6, 2022). "Nobel Prize-winning physicist: Bolder Boulder is
'pinnacle of road racing' " (https://www.dailycamera.com/2022/06/06/nobel-prize-winning-phy
sicist-bolder-boulder-is-pinnacle-of-road-racing/). Daily Camera.

Bibliography
Frängsmyr, Tore (2002). Les Prix Nobel: The Nobel Prizes 2001 (http://nobelprize.org/physic
s/laureates/2001/index.html). Stockholm: Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 2007-09-19.

External links
Cornell Group webpage (http://jilawww.colorado.edu/bec/CornellGroup) Archived (https://we
b.archive.org/web/20190315014447/http://jilawww.colorado.edu/bec/CornellGroup/) 2019-
03-15 at the Wayback Machine at the University of Colorado
 Bose–Einstein Condensate website (https://web.archive.org/web/20041211234309/http://ww
w.bec.nist.gov/) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology
Eric Allin Cornell Patents (https://web.archive.org/web/20120205212633/http://www.patentg
enius.com/inventor/CornellEricA.html)
Eric Allin Cornell (https://www.nobelprize.org/laureate/738) on Nobelprize.org including the
Nobel Lecture December 8, 2001 Bose-Einstein Condensation in a Dilute Gas; The First
70 Years and Some Recent Experiments

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