Wolfgang Ketterle

Even while studying physics, he was already one of the best; his professional development reads like a dream career. Wolfgang Ketterle was the youngest German ever to win the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2001, together with his American colleagues E. A. Cornell and C. E. Wieman. In 1995, the scientist was one of the first to succeed in generating the so-called Bose-Einstein-Condensate. Under the most extreme of low temperatures, this condensate – that does not occur naturally – proves Einstein's theories of quantum mechanics. Wolfgang Ketterle is convinced that "quantum mechanics are already just as fundamental today for science as Goethe's works or Beethoven's symphonies were for cultural education." Wolfgang Ketterle has been the John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics at MIT since 1998. His research group is focused on Atomic Quantum Gases.