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Press Release

For Immediate Release
April 17, 2006

Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman to Deliver First Lawrence Hall of Science
Chupp Lecture on Science Education

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Berkeley—Inspired by his 7th grade science teacher and freshman physics professor, Nobel physicist Carl Wieman pursued a career that has brought him the highest honors in research and led him to champion the advancement of science education. 

Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics, Wieman will deliver the first Lawrence Hall of Science Warren William Chupp Distinguished Annual Lecture. The lecture commemorates the life and work of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory physicist Warren Chupp and recognizes outstanding contributions in science education.

Wieman will speak about “Using the Tools of Science to Teach Science” on May 9, at 5 p.m., in Le Conte Hall at the University of California at Berkeley.  His talk is cosponsored by the Department of Physics.

Wieman shared the Nobel Prize for creating a completely new form of matter, called Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC), which occurs at just a few hundred billionths of a degree above absolute zero.  Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder, he chairs the National Research Council Board on Science Education.  In 2007, he will join the physics faculty at the University of British Columbia.  There he will head a new science education project in collaboration with the Science Education Project he established at University of Colorado.

Honoring Warren Chupp

Warren Chupp’s career in physics spanned more than 50 years of scientific discovery at the University of California.  He worked on the Manhattan Project under UC’s first Nobelist, Ernest O. Lawrence, and was instrumental in the building and start-up of the Bevatron, LBL’s  particle accelerator.  This technology helped scientists make major contributions in high energy particle physics, nuclear heavy-ion physics, medical research and therapy, and space-related studies of radiation damage and heavy particles in space.  Chupp earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from UC Berkeley.

“My father was devoted to Cal and intensely committed to his scientific work,” said his daughter, Camille Reed.  “Through this lecture, he is still a part of the University, inspiring research colleagues, students, and teachers to achieve what is possible at a great institution. That is the essence of both Cal
and my dad.”

Improving Science Education

Wieman’s achievements in the laboratory are matched by his determination to apply the expertise of research to science teaching.  The NRC Board on Science Education that he chairs is examining U.S. science education at all levels from kindergarten to graduate school.  Wieman has been recognized for his own dynamic teaching and national leadership in science education by being named the 2004 Professor of the Year among all doctoral and research universities in the U.S.  This honor was awarded by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

His Berkeley lecture, supported by an endowment from the Chupp family,
underscores the goals of Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science and Department of Physics to improve science education for all ages and promote broad public understanding of science.  Commemorating Ernest O. Lawrence, the Lawrence Hall of Science is a renowned public science center whose inquiry-based exhibits, programs, curriculum materials, teacher professional development, and school outreach impact millions of school children each year.  

Last year, the Hall's innovative Communicating Science course was honored with a campus Educational Initiative Award.  Begun in 1997 as a collaboration between Professor of Chemistry Angelica Stacy and LHS, the first course taught chemistry majors how to teach inquiry-based science and offered them direct experience teaching students in local public elementary schools.  Since then, 400 Berkeley students and at least 5,000 local elementary students have participated in Communicating Science courses.  The course is now taught in Physics, Chemistry, Integrative Biology, and Earth and Planetary Sciences (ocean science)

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