Published: May 31, 2005

News release courtesy CU-Colorado Springs

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. - Nobel Prize-winning physicist Eric Cornell will be a keynote speaker at a gathering of the world's top applied mathematicians June 4-7 at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

Cornell, 43, is a research physicist and fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder and an adjoint professor of physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Cornell shared the 2001 Nobel Prize for his work in creating a new form of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate. He was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Cornell will make his first visit to UCCS to attend the International Conference on Nonlinear Waves, Integrable Systems and Their Applications. He will present a lecture, "Experiments With Linear, Nonlinear and Topological Excitations in a Superfluid Gas" at 10:45 a.m. June 6 in the Science Auditorium on the UCCS campus. His appearance is free and open to the public.

Cornell is one of more than 80 world-leading applied mathematicians and physicists who will visit UCCS to further their knowledge of the field and to recognize the contributions of Mark Ablowitz, professor, Applied Mathematics, at CU-Boulder. Ablowitz is considered a pioneer in the field of applied mathematics as well as one of its most prolific researchers and writers.

Applied mathematics is the underpinning for a variety of consumer, industrial and military applications including high-speed communication and fluid dynamics used in both the aerospace industry and in predicting events such as tsunamis.

The conference will be June 4-7 at UCCS and will continue June 8 at CU-Boulder. Sarbarish Chakravarty, associate professor, Mathematics, and Radu Cascaval, assistant professor, Mathematics, are the conference organizers.

"We have participants coming from around the world to Colorado Springs to celebrate Mark Ablowitz's mathematical accomplishments and to learn," Chakravarty said. "It is an honor for us to host world leaders in our field in the spirit of cooperation and scholarship."

Other prominent conference participants and their institutions include Ronald Coifman, of Yale University, winner of the 1999 National Medal of Science; Martin Kruskal, Rutgers University, winner of the 1996 National Medal of Science; and Percy Deift, New York University, winner of the 1998 George Polya Prize.

Representatives from more than 16 countries including top U.S., British, French and Japanese universities will also attend. For a complete list of speakers and the schedule of events, visit .