Distinguished Professor Carl Wieman of the University of Colorado at Boulder has been elected a fellow of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences, becoming the 11th ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä faculty member to receive the honor.
Wieman, an internationally renowned physicist, was the only new member to be elected from Colorado this year. He is a fellow of JILA, a joint institute of ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä-Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Wieman was one of 147 new fellows elected to the academy, which has a total membership of 3,500 fellows and 600 foreign honorary members. John Adams and other early American leaders founded the academy in 1780.
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences honors leading intellectuals in every field and profession. New members are elected by current fellows, which include 168 Nobel Prize laureates and 58 Pulitzer Prize winners.
The 10 other ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä-Boulder members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences are professors Marvin Caruthers, Thomas Cech, Lawrence Gold, Carl Lineberger, David Prescott, Wolfgang Schmidt, Noboru Sueoka, Olke Uhlenbeck, Gilbert White and William Wood.
Wieman also is the recipient of the 1997 Bonfils-Stanton Foundation Award in the Field of Science, Including Medicine, which was presented in Denver on April 28. This award, one of four presented, honors "significant and unique contributions, primarily within the state of Colorado," and carries a $12,500 honorarium.
"Our trustees are proud to have been able to find four Coloradans who so clearly personify the spirit of accomplishment and dedication that my brother and I wished to honor," said Robert E. Stanton, president of the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation. "This year's awardees certainly present a model of citizenship and achievement that all Coloradans can aspire toward and take pride in."
Previous ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä-Boulder winners of the Bonfils-Stanton award include professors Caruthers, Cech and White.
Wieman was the co-leader of a research team that created a new state of matter in 1995 by cooling atoms to the lowest temperature ever recorded, a scientific advance hailed as the "Holy Grail" of physics. The discovery has opened up a new field of research that is now actively pursued around the world.
University of Chicago administrators, in awarding an honorary doctorate to Wieman last year, said "the consequences of this achievement for coherent atomic physics is likely to be as profound as was the discovery of the laser for coherent light."
Wieman has taught at ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä-Boulder since 1984. He developed innovative experiments for undergraduate physics classes, based on his research, that are being duplicated around the world.