APS Bestows Honors in a Wide Range of Fields

At its annual March meeting, to be held this year in Austin, Texas (see the meeting preview on page 56), the American Physical Society will recognize the outstanding efforts of 18 individuals in a wide variety of fields: biophysics, polymers, atomic and molecular physics, optics, and condensed matter physics.

The David Adler Lectureship Award will go to Ivan Schuller for his “research in metallic heterostructures and superlattices,” which he communicates “with unusual enthusiasm and eloquence,” according to the citation. Schuller is a professor of physics and a layer leader of the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology at the University of California, San Diego.

APS will bestow Apker Awards on two students for undergraduate thesis work done in one case at a PhD-granting institution and, in the other case, at a non–PhD-granting institution. The award for work at a doctorate-granting university will go to Jason Alicea for his thesis entitled “The Resistance of Multilayers with Long Length-Scale Interfacial Roughness,” done under the supervision of Selman Herschfield at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Alicea is now a graduate student in physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The Apker Award for work at a non-PhD-granting institution will be conferred on Stephen Charles Doret, who is now a physics graduate student at Harvard University. His undergraduate thesis, supervised by Protik Majumder at Williams College, was “A Precise Measurement of the Stark Shift in the 6P_1/2 → 7S_1/2 378 nm Transition in Atomic Thallium.”

The Herbert P. Broida Prize will go to George Flynn, Higgins Professor of Chemistry and director of the Environmental Molecular Sciences Institute at Columbia University. He is being recognized for his “pioneering, insightful, and sustained studies of vibrational energy transfer in polyatomic molecules using a number of innovative experimental techniques, and for recent contributions to [the] understanding of liquid—solid interfaces using scanning probe techniques.”

Boris Altshuler, professor of physics at Princeton University, will receive the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize for his “fundamental contributions to the understanding of the quantum mechanics of electrons in random potentials and confined geometries, including pioneering work on the interplay of interactions and disorder.”

Rudolf Tromp will be honored with the Davisson-Germer Prize in Atomic or Surface Physics for his “pioneering work in understanding the structure and growth of semiconductor surfaces and interfaces.” He is the manager of molecular assemblies and devices at IBM Corp’s T. J. Watson Research Center.

This year’s recipient of the John H. Dillon Medal is Helmut Strey, professor of polymer science and engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is cited for “contributing significantly to our understanding of the physics of biopolymers and polyelectrolytes.”

Arthur Ashkin will receive the Keithley Award for Advances in Measurement Science, for “theoretical and experimental contributions to the understanding of laser cooling and trapping of atoms and particles.” The citation additionally praises Ashkin for “demonstrating the optical gradient forces on atoms and the trapping of atoms with light, and for inventing optical tweezers and showing how they can be used to measure the physical forces generated by biological molecular motors.” Ashkin is retired from AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he was head of the laser science research department.

APS will present its Irving Langmuir Prize in Chemical Physics to Phaedon Avouris, manager of nanometer-scale science and technology at IBM Corp’s T. J. Watson Research Center. Avouris is being cited for his “fundamental pioneering contributions to nanostructures and atomic-scale phenomena at surfaces.”

The James C. McGroddy Prize will go to Charles Leiber, Mark Hyman Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University. The citation praises Leiber for his “outstanding contributions in nanostructured and functional nanostructured materials.”

Pierre Hohenberg will receive the Lars Onsager Prize for his “contributions to a wide range of topics in statistical and condensed matter physics, including the theory of dynamic scaling close to critical points, the theory of pattern formation in nonequilibrium systems, and density functional theory.” Hohenberg is the deputy provost for science and technology and an adjunct professor of physics and applied physics at Yale University.

The George E. Pake Prize will go to C. Paul Robinson, Sandia National Laboratories president and laboratories director. The prize is being awarded in recognition of Robinson’s “leadership roles as Director of the Sandia National Laboratories and as Head of the US Delegation to the US/USSR arms control talks in Geneva.” He is also being honored for his “pioneering contributions to the development of high explosives lasers, e-beam initiated chemical lasers, and molecular laser isotope separation methods.”

The Earle K. Plyler Prize for Molecular Spectroscopy will be shared by Kevin Lehmann and Giacinto Scoles for their “collaborative contributions to our understanding of intramolecular dynamics by high resolution spectroscopy and to atomic and molecular spectroscopy in liquid [helium] nanodroplets, through the experimental and theoretical development of molecular and cluster beam spectroscopy.” Both recipients are at Princeton University: Lehmann is a professor of chemistry and Scoles is the Donner Professor of Science in the chemistry department and in the Princeton Materials Institute.

Andrew Lovinger will receive the Polymer Prize for his “contributions to fundamental understanding of structure, morphology, and properties in technologically important polymers.” Lovinger directs the polymers program in the materials research division at NSF. He is also a consultant at Bell Laboratories, from which he retired last year.

APS will give its Prize to a Faculty Member for Research in an Undergraduate Institute to Dhiraj Sardar for his “outstanding research on the interaction of laser light with matter, particularly the spectroscopic characterization of new solid-state media.” The citation also praises his “involvement and support of undergraduates in his research and … his dedication to minority student education.” Sardar is a professor in the physics and astronomy department at the University of Texas at San Antonio and director of the university’s laser research laboratory.

Steve R. White, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine, will garner the Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics. He is being recognized for his “development, application, and dissemination of the numerical density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method.”

APS will present its John Wheatley Award to Kennedy Reed, a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, for “multifaceted contributions to the promotion of physics research and education in Africa.” The citation praises Reed for “developing agreements for exchange of faculty and students between USA and African institutions, for organizing and conducting international workshops and conferences on physics in Africa, and for advocating increased USA and international involvement with physics in Africa.”