Ketterle was born inHeidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, and attended school inEppelheim and Heidelberg.[4] In 1976 he entered theUniversity of Heidelberg, before transferring to theTechnical University of Munich two years later, where he gained the equivalent of his master's diploma in 1982.[4][5] In 1986 he earned a PhD in experimentalmolecular spectroscopy under the supervision of Herbert Walther and Hartmut Figger at theMax Planck Institute for Quantum Optics inGarching, before conducting postdoctoral research at Garching and the University of Heidelberg.[5] In 1990 he joined the group ofDavid E. Pritchard in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT (RLE).[4] He was appointed to the MIT physics faculty in 1993 and, since 1998, he has beenJohn D. MacArthur Professor of Physics.[5] In 2006, he was appointed Associate Director of RLE and began serving as director of MIT's Center for Ultracold Atoms.[5]
After achievingBose–Einstein condensation in dilute gases in 1995, his group was in 1997 able to demonstrateinterference between two colliding condensates,[6] as well as the first realization of an "atom laser", theatomic analogue of an opticallaser.[7] In addition to ongoing investigations of Bose–Einstein condensates in ultracold atoms, his more recent achievements have included the creation of amolecular Bose condensate in 2003,[8] as well as a 2005 experiment providing evidence for "high-temperature"superfluidity in afermionic condensate.[9]
BEC 1, the apparatus on which Prof. Wolfgang Ketterle's group did the research awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Ketterle is also a runner, and was featured in the December 2009 issue of Runner's World's "I'm a Runner".[10] Ketterle spoke of taking his running shoes to Stockholm when he received the Nobel Prize and happily running in the early dusk. Ketterle completed the 2013 Boston Marathon with a time of2:49:16,[11] and in 2014, in Boston, ran a personal record of 2:44:06.
Ketterle has been married to Michèle Plott since 2011. He has five children, three with Gabriele Ketterle, to whom he was married from 1985 to 2001.[15]
Wolfgang Ketterle on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture 8 December 2001 "When Atoms Behave as Waves: Bose-Einstein Condensation and the Atom Laser"
