Belmont’s Fast Nobel Prize Winner Racing in Monday’s BAA Marathon

Photo: The BAA Marathon.

It’s likely Wolfgang Ketterle will be the fastest Nobel Prize winner participating in Monday’s 119th Boston Athletic Association Marathon, but the 57-year-old academic could have another impressive distinction; first Belmontian to cross the finish line on Boston’s Boylston Street.

The MIT professor of physics, who with Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001 for their work on Bose–Einstein condensate, will be running with the low bib number 655. Ketterle, who is a member of Somerville Road Runners, finished last year’s BAA race in 2 hours, 44 minutes and 6 seconds, good for 528th overall and third fastest runner in the 55-59 age group.

“With science and running, you should never give up. You should challenge yourself and be willing to exhaust yourself. I like that, both in science and running,” Ketterle told Runner’s World when it profiled him in it’s “I’m a Runner” feature in 2009.

In the past decade, the fastest Belmont master runner (those over 40 years old) was Robert Cipriano, who runs the marathon in the 2 hour, 40 minute range in his early 50s, but the long-time resident – and like Ketterle, a Somerville Road Runner – pulled up stakes to Brighton.

In addition to Ketterle, 27 Belmont residents will hopefully be toeing the line in Hopkinton on what is likely a cool and cloudy day (although there will be a head wind). Find out if your neighbor will be racing (many for charity and causes) on Marathon Monday.

Name, age, bib number