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CORVALLIS, ORE., May 23, 2007 — With apologies to Thomas Wolfe, you can go home again, especially if you have Nobel Prize and Professor of the Year honors on your resume.

Renowned physicist Carl Wieman has won both awards, and he will talk about his groundbreaking scientific research when he returns to his place of birth this summer as the keynote speaker for the 19th annual da Vinci Days festival.

The former Corvallis High School graduate will speak on "Bose-Einstein Condensation: Quantum Weirdness at the Lowest Temperature in the Universe" during his 7:30 p.m. presentation on Saturday, July 21, at LaSells Stewart Center on the Oregon State University campus.

Dr. Wieman and a colleague won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001, six years after making history by becoming the first scientists to produce Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), a new state of matter. In the BEC state, a large number of atoms lose their individual identities and behave as a single quantum entity, or "superatom." The study and use of BEC properties now has become an important subfield of physics.

BEC was named, in part, to honor Albert Einstein for his 1924 prediction that gas would undergo a dramatic transformation at a sufficiently low temperature.

"In 1995, my group was able to observe this transformation by cooling a gas sample to the unprecedented temperature of less than 100 billionths of a degree above absolute zero," Wieman said. "(In my address), I will discuss what BEC is and how we create it."

Wieman obtained his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1977. After performing post-doctoral work at the University of Michigan, he accepted a faculty position in 1984 with the Department of Physics at the University of Colorado. It was there that he and Eric Cornell conducted their Nobel Prize-winning experiments.

In the last several years, Wieman has developed a passion for improving science education. In recognition of his dedication to undergraduate teaching, he was named 2004 U.S. Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation. In January he was awarded the 2007 Oersted Medal, the highest honor given by the American Association of Physics Teachers. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and chairs the academy's Board on Science Education.

The Nobel laureate is currently a member of the physics faculty at the University of British Columbia, where he heads the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative.

Wieman's keynote, sponsored by the OSU College of Science, is open to everyone with a paid admission to da Vinci Days. Full weekend passes, which include all events and activities from Friday evening through Sunday, can be purchased now from the festival's web site: www.davinci-days.org. The price is $15 for adults (12 and up) and $10 for children (6-11.) Pre-festival ticket sales begin June 15 at multiple locations around Corvallis and in Albany, and will be sold at the festival's Main Gate at 11th Street & Madison Avenue. Single-day admissions, available only at the gate, will be $10 for adults and $5 for children. Children five and under will be admitted for free.