[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 63 (Wednesday, May 14, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E913]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              COLORADO SCIENTISTS WIN INTERNATIONAL PRIZE

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                          HON. DAVID E. SKAGGS

                              of colorado

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, May 13, 1997

  Mr. SKAGGS. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to report to the House that 
two Colorado physicists have won the prestigious King Faisal 
International Prize in Science for 1997. This is among the four or five 
most significant international prizes that are awarded for science.
  The Colorado scientists are Dr. Carl Wieman of the University of 
Colorado's Department of Physics and Dr. Eric Cornell of the Quantum 
Physics Division at the Commerce Department's National Institute of 
Standards and Technology [NIST] in Boulder. Both are Fellows of the 
Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics [JILA], a joint institute 
of the University of Colorado and NIST.
  In 1995, Dr. Wieman and Dr. Cornell and their team created the first 
Bose-Einstein condensate, a new form of matter predicted by Albert 
Einstein. The condensate occurs when several individual atoms meld into 
a single entity called a ``superatom'' at a temperature of 170 
billionths of a degree above absolute zero. Dr. Wieman and Dr. Cornell 
cooled the superatoms to 20 billionths of a degree above absolute zero, 
the lowest temperature ever achieved. The discovery marks a 
breakthrough in the field of quantum mechanics and has already opened 
up new areas for scientific exploration, including the recently-
demonstrated ``atom laser.''
  On behalf of my colleagues, I congratulate Dr. Wieman and Dr. Cornell 
and their team for their scientific breakthrough and for winning the 
1997 King Faisal International Prize in Science. I also congratulate 
NIST, the University of Colorado, and JILA for supporting this 
important project.

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