UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- David Wineland, Nobel Prize-winning physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, will present the Eberly Family Distinguished Lecture in Science at 2 p.m. Thursday, April 11, in the HUB-Robeson Center Auditorium. This free public lecture, titled "Superposition, Entanglement, and Raising Schrödinger's Cat," is sponsored by the Penn State Eberly College of Science.
Wineland's research focuses on developing techniques for using lasers to cool ions -- electrically charged atoms or molecules -- to temperatures near absolute zero, which is the coldest possible temperature. In 1978, Wineland achieved the first demonstration of laser cooling and, since then, he has worked on experiments using trapped, laser-cooled ions to test theories related to quantum physics.
Wineland has received numerous awards throughout his career. In addition to winning the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics, which he shared with French physicist Serge Haroche "for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems," he also was awarded the Franklin Institute's 2010 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics. His additional honors include a Herbert Walther Award from the Optical Society in 2009, a National Medal of Science in the engineering sciences in 2007, an Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science in 2001, a Rabi Award from the Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1998, the Einstein Prize for Laser Science of the Society of Optical and Quantum Electronics in 1996, the William F. Meggers Award of the Optical Society of America in 1990, and the Davisson-Germer Prize in Atomic or Surface Physics in 1990. Wineland is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Optical Society, and he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1992.
Wineland received a doctoral degree in physics from Harvard University in 1970. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1965.
The Eberly Family Distinguished Lecture series was inaugurated in 2001 to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the renaming of the Eberly College of Science on March 17, 1990, in honor of one of its most generous benefactors, the Eberly Family of Uniontown, Pa. A 1986 commitment from the Eberly Family Charitable Trust created a $1 million endowed chair in each of the college's seven departments and provided funding for an endowed chair in science, an endowed professorship in biotechnology and the Hobby-Eberly Telescope. That transforming gift has enabled the college to attract outstanding faculty members and students, and to enhance its missions of education, research and service.
For more information or access assistance, contact Chris Moyer at ecm2@psu.edu or 814-865-9592.