Eric Allin Cornell
Eric Allin Cornell
Eric Allin Cornellis an American physicist who, along with Carl E. Wieman, was able to synthesize the first Bose–Einstein condensate in 1995. For their efforts, Cornell, Wieman, and Wolfgang Ketterle shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhysicist
Date of Birth19 December 1961
CountryUnited States of America
modern old-fashioned
I was partly old-fashioned and partly modern.
california born
I was born in Palo Alto, California in 1961.
realizing reason be-good
Conversely, I came to realize that being good at something is hardly a reason to avoid doing it.
mistake chinese literature
As it was, I realized choosing the study of Chinese literature as my life's work was probably a mistake.
smart school effort
My fellow students there were very smart, but the really novel thing was that they actually seemed to put a lot of effort into their school work. By the end of my first semester there, I began to get into that habit as well.
mother father school
My father was a professor of civil engineering at MIT, and my mother taught high school English.
character interesting chinese
Travel provided many interesting experiences, but perhaps the most useful lesson I learned was that I really had no proficiency for learning the thousands of characters of the written Chinese language.
fun air watches
I certainly remember building model rockets. It was fun to watch the rocket blast into the air, suspenseful to wonder if the parachute would open to bring the rocket safely back.
brother california father including sabbatical younger
The family, including my younger brother and sister, accompanied my father on sabbatical years to Berkeley, California and Lisbon, Portugal.
years wife way
It was there I met my future wife, Celeste Landry, although our lives took us separate ways for many years and we were not to marry until more than ten years later.
school writing chess
Between rounds of speed chess I read enough of a programming manual to teach myself to write programs on the school's DEC mainframe in the language Basic.
career enjoyed persuaded pursue scientific
I really enjoyed this experience, and it was these jobs, more than anything else, that persuaded me to pursue a career in scientific research.
school math years
My freshman year of high school I joined the chess and math clubs.