Marquette welcomes today its fifth Nobel Prize winner to visit campus since 2003. Unlike the previous four speakers, Eric Cornell will talk about his work in science, not peace.

Cornell, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001, will speak today and Friday.

Marquette was able to bring Cornell to campus through a traveling lecture program for universities sponsored by the Laser Science division of the American Physical Society, according to Physics Chair Ruth Howes.

Jeanne Hossenlopp, chair of the chemistry department, is a member of the society and knew about the opportunity to bring a speaker to campus. Together, Howes said, the chairs wrote a grant to the society requesting that a speaker come to Marquette.

Cornell was their first choice out of three possible speakers, Hossenlopp said.

"Nobel Prize winners are sort of like giants," Howes said. "It's an honor to hear one of them. The first time I spoke to him over the phone I almost fainted."

Although the American Physical Society usually approaches Cornell with several different universities to speak at, Cornell said he chose Marquette because "I have never been to Milwaukee before and thought coming to Marquette sounded like fun."

Cornell will give a public lecture Thursday on his Nobel Prize subject, "Stone Cold Science: Bose-Einstein Condensation and the Weird World of Physics a Millionth of a Degree above Absolute Zero." His Friday lecture, "Rotating the Irrotatable: Quantized Vortices in a Super-Gas," is a joint colloquium of the physics and chemistry departments and is also open to the public.

"I hope (students will) learn and come away with an appreciation of how cold things can get these days," as well as "how quantum mechanics can actually become visible," Cornell said.

Cornell received his bachelor's degree from Stanford University in 1985 and his master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1990. He then went to JILA, a research institute for physical sciences based on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder, where he did his Nobel Prize research with Carl Wieman and Wolfgang Ketterle.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Cornell received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 1996 and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics in 1999, and also was elected as a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2000.

Cornell will also visit chemistry and physics classes today and Friday, Howes said, particularly "pre-surface courses" for students studying to become science teachers.

Hossenlopp and Howes said they hope both science students and the general public will take something away from his lectures.

"It's the same as listening to a really good poet read his poetry as it is to hear a scientist talk about his science," Howes said.

Chemistry and physics students are not required to attend; however, Howes said they are encouraged to do so.

"I want to go just to keep up with new findings and research going on in science today," said Liz Wilson, a freshman in the College of Health Sciences.

The lectures will be held in the Weasler Auditorium at 7 p.m. today, and in Todd Wehr Chemistry 121 at 4 p.m. Friday.

This article was published in The Marquette Tribune on October 13, 2005.