Carl Wieman

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Image:WiemanandCornell.jpg Carl Edwin Wieman (born March 26 1951) is an American physicist of the University of Colorado at Boulder who (with Eric Allin Cornell), in 1995, produced the first true Bose-Einstein condensate.

In a Time magazine article (April 10, 2000), Wieman was quoted, "We get to within a billionth of a degree of absolute zero."

Wieman was born in Corvallis, Oregon. Wieman earned his B.S. in 1973 from MIT and his PhD. from Stanford University in 1977; he was also given a Doctorate of Science (Honorary) from the University of Chicago awarded in 1997. He was awarded the Lorentz Medal in 1998. In 2001, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Cornell and Wolfgang Ketterle. In 2004, he was named United States Professor of the Year among all doctoral and research universities.

In the last several years, Wieman has been particularly involved with efforts at improving science education. He has used and promotes a system called "peer instruction", where teachers repeatedly ask multiple-choice concept questions during class, and students reply on the spot with little wireless "clicker" devices. If a large proportion of the class chooses a wrong answer, student discuss among themselves and reply again.<ref>Trading Research for Teaching, Inside Higher Ed, 7 April 2006</ref>

In 2007 Wieman will join the University of British Columbia faculty.

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