AAAS Hands Out Awards to Scientists

The American Association for the Advancement of Science presented several awards for 2000 at its annual meeting in San Francisco in February. Each prizewinner received a $2500 cash award and a commemorative plaque.

Among the recipients was Leon M. Lederman, who was honored with the AAAS Philip Hauge Abelson Prize for “his scientific scholarship, leadership, and advocacy of international collaborations in science, and a strong commitment to the improvement of math and science education at the local, state, and national levels,” according to the citation. Lederman is Pritzker Professor of Science at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. He shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger for the discovery of the muon neutrino.

Howard Schachman won the AAAS Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award for being “at the forefront of efforts to eliminate research misconduct in federally funded research while ensuring that such efforts do not impinge on the freedoms that allow scientists to be creative in their pursuit of knowledge. … [He] has had a distinguished career as a biochemist and biophysicist.” He is Professor of The Graduate School in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley.

The AAAS Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology went to Vaclav Smil, a Distinguished Professor at the University of Manitoba’s department of geography. He was recognized for “his unique integration of information concerning energy, environment, and hunger in a manner that is accessible to the general public and policy makers who must address these difficult global issues.”