Eric Cornell

Eric Cornell was born in Palo Alto, California in 1961. He received his B.S. Physics with distinction and honor in 1985 from Stanford and a Doctorate in Physics from MIT in 1990.

In 1990, Cornell became a Post-Doctorate at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (now called JILA) where he began working with Carl Wieman on laser cooling experiments. Cornell and Wieman were able to synthesize the first Bose-Einstein condensate in 1995. Cornell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001, together with Wieman and Wolfgang Ketterle "for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates".

In October 2004, Cornell had his left arm and shoulder amputated due to a case of necrotizing fasciitis (often called "flesh-eating disease"). He was discharged from hospital in mid-December 2004 and returned to work part-time in April 2005.

He is currently a fellow at JILA, a Senior Scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder and a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Cornell group page:
http://jilawww.colorado.edu/bec/CornellGroup/index.html

Nobel Prize pagge:
http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/2001/cornell-autobio.html