Nobel Prize Winners Announced

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and its weekly journal, Science, commend the accomplishments of all 2001 Nobel Prize winners.

False-color image of the velocity distribution in a cloud of rubidium atoms that have formed a Bose-Einstein condensate. Color indicates the density of atoms having the velocity specified by the two horizontal axes. The high-density blue and white spire is an image of low-energy atoms that have condensed into a single quantum state. The average speed of the atoms in the spire is about 0.5 millimeter per second. [Image: M.R. Matthews].

Special congratulations go to three researchers whose pioneering studies of Bose-Einstein condensates were the focus of a landmark Science cover story on 14 July 1995. Physicists Wolfgang Ketterle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Eric Cornell of JILA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology; and Carl Wieman of JILA and the University of Colorado at Boulder, received the Nobel Prize "for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of condensates."

Specifically, from gases of rubidium, sodium and other alkali metals, these scientists created "superparticles," or Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), which exhibit unique physical properties. Their work set the stage for atomic lasers and other technological and fundamental advances.

The prize was announced this month by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Relevant research articles will be made available by the AAAS and Science at the web site, http://www.sciencemag.org.

Congratulations also to Leland H. Hartwell of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; and to Sir Paul M. Nurse and R. Timothy Hunt, both of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, winners of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Hartwell, Nurse and Hunt were honored "for their discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle."

Winning the 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry were William Knowles, now retired from Monsanto; Ryoji Noyori of Nagoya University; and K. Barry Sharpless of the Scripps Research Institute, creators of special catalysts that generate a particular mirror image of a compound.

Journalists are invited to contact the AAAS News & Information Office for additional background on Science articles by a number of the Nobel Prize winners. Please call (202) 326-6440, or send e-mail to scipak@aaas.org.

--Ginger Pinholster