Carl Wieman

Biography

Wieman was born in Corvallis, Oregon to N. Orr Wieman and Alison Marjorie Fry, and graduated from Corvallis High School. His paternal grandfather Henry Nelson Wieman was a religious philosopher of German descent; his mother had white Anglo-Saxon Protestant family background. He earned a B.S. from MIT in 1973 and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1977, and received a Doctor of Science honoris causa from the University of Chicago in 1997. The Lorentz Medal was awarded to him in 1998. In 2001 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Eric Allin Cornell and Wolfgang Ketterle. He was named United States Professor of the Year among all doctoral and research universities in 2004. In a 2020 interview given to Federal University of Pará in Brazil, Wieman discussed his youth, his journey as a physicist, the influence of teachers and parents, and his work in science education and the founding of PhET. He joined the University of British Columbia on 1 January 2007 to head a science education initiative while retaining a twenty percent appointment at the University of Colorado Boulder. On 1 September 2013, he joined Stanford University with a joint appointment in physics and the Graduate School of Education. Wieman has conducted educational research on science instruction and served as Chair of the National Academy of Sciences' Board on Science Education from 2005 to 2009. He promotes Eric Mazur's peer instruction using clicker devices. In 2007 he received the Oersted Medal from the American Association of Physics Teachers. He is founder and chairman of PhET, a web-based directive of University of Colorado Boulder offering simulations for teaching physics, chemistry, biology, earth science and math.