The University of Colorado can again claim international bragging rights, as one of its own has become the fourth faculty member to win a Nobel Prize for science.
John L. Hall shared the 2005 honor in physics for work applying modern quantum physics to the study of optics. The results of the work are all around us, including improved lasers, Global Positioning System technology, better telecommunications and creation of extremely accurate clocks. Roy J. Glauber of Harvard and German scientist Theodor W. Haensch also shared in the award.
Hall has earned many other awards during his long, illustrious career, but the Nobel surely must be the apex.
Four years ago, two other CU faculty members, Eric Cornell and Carl Weiman, won the Nobel for their discovery of a type of matter that exists only near absolute zero. Like Hall, Cornell and Weiman have joint appointments to the National Institute of Standards and Technology. CU’s first Nobel was the 1989 chemistry prize to Professor Tom Cech.
Indeed, CU ranks 31st in the world and 24th in the nation in science programs, according to a 2004 international survey by China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
For CU, Hall’s Nobel provides a much- needed morale boost in the wake of football scandals, the Ward Churchill mess and the resignation of a president.
Hall’s award also underscores the need to support basic science and should prompt some soul-searching by Colorado citizens and policymakers.
Hall’s research has been done over decades. He’s now 71. Where will Colorado, or the United States, get future Nobel winners? As noted in the editorial above, the same day that Hall’s award was announced, The Denver Post reported an alarming gap persists between Colorado’s white public school students and its black and Hispanic pupils. Yet black and Hispanics compose an increasingly larger percentage of all public school students.
If youngsters don’t learn in their early years, they may not graduate from high school and certainly won’t get doctoral degrees in physics. Indeed, in recent years national leaders in engineering and science have warned that not enough American youths are going into technical fields.
Concern for the future shouldn’t shadow Hall’s accomplishment. But the paradox of his international award, coupled with sobering reports about our public schools, should spur Colorado to recommitting itself to excellence in public education and support for our state’s research universities.
