Carl Wieman & Eric Cornell

Carl Wieman and Eric Cornell transformed modern physics through their groundbreaking work at CU Boulder and JILA. In 1995, the two researchers led the team that created the world’s first Bose-Einstein condensate, a new state of matter predicted decades earlier by Albert Einstein and Satyendra Nath Bose. Their achievement opened new frontiers in quantum science and earned them the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics, helping establish CU Boulder as a global leader in scientific discovery.

"I know you can double how much a student learns depending on what method the instructor is using." Wieman told NPR in 2016. Since receiving the Nobel, he has worked to improve teaching methods in STEM fields.