The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“COLORADO SCIENTISTS WIN INTERNATIONAL PRIZE” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Commerce was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E913 on May 14, 1997.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
COLORADO SCIENTISTS WIN INTERNATIONAL PRIZE
______
HON. DAVID E. SKAGGS
of colorado
in the house of representatives
Tuesday, May 13, 1997
Mr. SKAGGS. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to report to the House that two Colorado physicists have won the prestigious King Faisal International Prize in Science for 1997. This is among the four or five most significant international prizes that are awarded for science.
The Colorado scientists are Dr. Carl Wieman of the University of Colorado's Department of Physics and Dr. Eric Cornell of the Quantum Physics Division at the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST] in Boulder. Both are Fellows of the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics [JILA], a joint institute of the University of Colorado and NIST.
In 1995, Dr. Wieman and Dr. Cornell and their team created the first Bose-Einstein condensate, a new form of matter predicted by Albert Einstein. The condensate occurs when several individual atoms meld into a single entity called a ``superatom'' at a temperature of 170 billionths of a degree above absolute zero. Dr. Wieman and Dr. Cornell cooled the superatoms to 20 billionths of a degree above absolute zero, the lowest temperature ever achieved. The discovery marks a breakthrough in the field of quantum mechanics and has already opened up new areas for scientific exploration, including the recently-
demonstrated ``atom laser.''
On behalf of my colleagues, I congratulate Dr. Wieman and Dr. Cornell and their team for their scientific breakthrough and for winning the 1997 King Faisal International Prize in Science. I also congratulate NIST, the University of Colorado, and JILA for supporting this important project.
____________________
