PLEASE NOTE: THE MARKER LECTURES IN THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES HAVE BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER. For more information, please contact the Department of Physics at (814) 863-0108.

Nobel Laureate to Present Marker Lectures in the Physical Sciences on 14 and 15 February 2007

5 February 2007—Nobel Laureate Wolfgang Ketterle, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will present the Russell Marker Lectures in the Physical Sciences on 14 and 15 February 2007 at the Penn State University Park campus. The series begins with a lecture designed to be entertaining for a general audience, titled "Bose-Einstein Condensates: The Coldest Matter in the Universe," at 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, 14 February, in 112 Forest Resources Building on the University Park campus. Ketterle also will give a more specialized lecture, titled “New Forms of Quantum Matter Near Absolute Zero Temperature,” at 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, 15 February, in 117 Osmond Laboratory. These free public lectures are sponsored by the Penn State Eberly College of Science.

Ketterle was recognized with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001, together with E. A. Cornell and C. E. Wieman, for his observation of Bose-Einstein condensation in a gas in 1995 and the first realization of an atom laser in 1997. Ketterle also is known for the development of important techniques for manipulating and studying Bose-Einstein condensates. He leads a research group exploring the properties of ultracold gases. His research in the field of atomic physics and laser spectroscopy includes laser cooling and trapping, atom optics and interferometry, and studies of Bose-Einstein condensation and Fermi degeneracy. A major focus of his work is the exploration of new forms of matter.

Ketterle is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Physics. He is a member of the German Physical Society; the Optical Society of America; the European Academy of Sciences and Arts; the Academy of Sciences in Heidelberg, Germany; the European Academy of Arts, Sciences, and Humanities; the Bavarian Academy of Sciences; and the German Academy of Natural Scientists of Leopoldina. He also is a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

In addition to the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics, Ketterle's awards include a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in 1996, the Rabi Prize of the American Physical Society in 1997, the Gustav-Hertz Prize of the German Physical Society in 1997, the Discover Magazine Award for Technological Innovation in 1998, the Fritz London Prize in Low Temperature Physics in 1999, the Dannie-Heineman Prize of the Academy of Sciences of Germany in 1999, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics in 2000, the Medal of Merit of the State of Baden-Würtemberg in 2002, the Knight Commander's Cross Badge and Star of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2002, and the Killian Award from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2004.

Ketterle received a diploma--equivalent to a master’s degree--from the Technical University of Munich, Germany, in 1982, and a doctoral degree in physics from the University of Munich, Germany, in 1986. He did postdoctoral work at the Max-Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching and at the University of Heidelberg. In 1990, he joined MIT as a postdoctoral student and joined the physics faculty there in 1993. In 1998, he was named the John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics.

The Marker Lectures were established in 1984 through a gift from Russell Earl Marker, professor emeritus of chemistry at Penn State, whose pioneering synthetic methods revolutionized the steroid-hormone industry and opened the door to the current era of hormone therapies, including the birth-control pill. The Marker endowment allows the Penn State Eberly College of Science to present annual Marker Lectures in astronomy and astrophysics, the chemical sciences, evolutionary biology, genetic engineering, the mathematical sciences, and physics.

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