AAPT presents awards in Seattle

The American Association of Physics Teachers has conferred several honors in recognition of recipients’ work in introducing physics concepts to students and the public. The awards were distributed in January during a joint meeting in Seattle of AAPT and the American Astronomical Society.

Carl E. Wieman took home the Oersted Award, AAPT’s most prestigious honor, “for notable contributions to the teaching of physics.” Wieman is director of the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where he is also a professor in the physics and astronomy department.

AAPT has bestowed its Melba Newell Phillips Award “for creative leadership, dedicated service, and exceptional contributions to the teaching of physics” on Clifford E. Swartz. He is a professor emeritus and an adjunct professor of physics at Stony Brook University.

Alexei V. Filippenko received the Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award “for stimulating interest [in] and knowledge of an active area of physics research and broadening its impact on the teaching of physics.” He gave his talk, “Evidence from Type Ia Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and Dark Matter,” on 9 January at the joint meeting. Filippenko is an astronomy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and heads the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope project at Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton in California.

AAPT also handed out six Distinguished Service Citations in recognition of contributions to the advancement of and excellence in the teaching of physics. Receiving the citations were Robert J. Beichner (North Carolina State University, Raleigh), A. John Mallinckrodt (California State Polytechnic University, Pomona), Deborah J. Rice (Kirkwood High School, St. Louis, Missouri), Paul A. Stokstad (PASCO, Rosehill, California), and David and Christine Vernier (Vernier Software and Technology, Beaverton, Oregon).

A new award created by AAPT in 2007 honored the physics departments of the University of Washington in Seattle and Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington, for boosting enrollments of students majoring in physics. They received Special Presidential Citations “for achieving an exemplary increase in [their] numbers of physics majors.”