CU-Boulder’s Nobel Laureate List Grows

Boulder’s newest Nobel laureate, largely responsible for propelling the field of quantum physics forward to more unimaginable advancements, is more than brilliant — he is also an unassuming nice guy. Almost anyone who knows David Wineland would say so. Wineland recently expanded the University of Colorado Boulder’s list of Nobel Prize winners to five.

Coaxing the soft-spoken, mild-mannered Wineland to accept praise for the honor he shared with French colleague and good friend Serge Haroche is about as easy as isolating and observing a particle without disrupting its quantum-mechanical nature. Of course, Wineland and Haroche did manage the latter feat — once deemed impossible — through what the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences called “ingenious laboratory methods.”

Wineland, 69, attributes the achievement to the work of many.

“I think the prize tends to focus on a couple of individuals, but I think it may distort a little bit how science is done,´ said Wineland, a CU-Boulder physics lecturer who leads graduate students in his lab at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. “The things I worked on, a lot of people worked on. I think it’s more a recognition of the field,´ said Wineland, who joined NIST 37 years ago and just bumped its Nobel physics count to four.

Modesty aside, Wineland’s discovery — the ability to trap electrically charged atoms, or ions, and control and measure them with light, or photons, without destroying them — has opened the door to the field of quantum physics as never before, said Paul Beale, professor and chair of CU-Boulder’s department of physics.

“We now have the potential in the future of producing computers that are thousands or millions of times faster than what we have now,” Beale said.

Such a computer could “change our everyday lives in this century in the same radical way as the classical computer did in the last century,” Wineland’s Nobel citation stated.

In addition to quantum computers, Wineland focuses on the development of atomic clocks, an area where his pioneering efforts are leading to the next generation of the world’s most-precise timekeepers.

“He’s an exquisitely good scientist,” Beale said. “He basically invented several fields in order to do his work. This is not the first Nobel Prize he could have won.”

Wineland’s work could help create atomic clocks that are thousands of times more stable and sensitive, which could lead to advancements in GPS technology, among other things.

Wineland’s 2012 Nobel Prize in physics brings to four the number of laureates associated with CU-Boulder’s physics department.

“There are only a few universities in the world that have as many or more, and they are the very best places in the world,´ said Beale, attributing the success to a strong commitment between NIST and CU-Boulder.

CU-Boulder’s highly ranked graduate program attracts top students. One of them is Brad Blakestad, who worked with Wineland for seven years, graduating in 2010, and is now a physics consultant in Washington, D.C.

“He’s a pretty laid-back guy and incredibly intelligent,” Blakestad said of the lanky, horseshoe-mustached Wineland, who can sometimes be seen on the bike paths of Boulder to get, he says, “some exercise and away from physics for a while.”

Blakestad recalled how Wineland, who is married with two sons and two grandchildren, gave graduate students freedom to explore but was always available to provide direction. “He doesn’t attract a lot of attention to himself on purpose, but everyone is familiar with his work and respects him because of how good he is.”

Many great minds inspired and helped Wineland on his Nobel Prize path, from childhood math teachers to college mentors to the group of scientists he works with today. In fact, asked about his greatest pride, Wineland singled out his current colleagues’ collective success, a choice unlikely to come as a surprise to those who know him.

Wineland, born in Wauwatosa, Wis., grew up in Sacramento, Calif. He earned a bachelor of arts degree in physics from the University of California at Berkeley and master’s and doctoral degrees in physics from Harvard University, where he worked with Nobel laureate Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. Wineland then performed postdoctoral research with Nobel laureate Hans Dehmelt at the University of Washington before joining NIST.

“Despite being extremely good and at the very top of the field, he’s very humble,” Beale said. “When he gave his Nobel lecture, he spent most of the time thanking all of the people he’s worked with. He’s just the nicest guy you can imagine.”

Blakestad said Wineland’s love of science is evident. Exploring the unexplored and doing the “detective work” are the best aspects of the job, Wineland said, and he does not plan to hang up his lab coat any time soon.

“Science never ends,” he said. “You reach some plateaus, maybe, but the work never ends. We can always look forward to making better things.”

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