APS fellow blocked from attending physics meeting by US State Department

Science : Last fall, Iranian physicist Farhad Ardalan was named a fellow of the American Physical Society, in part because of his efforts to connect Iran to the global scientific community and strengthen bonds between Iran and the US.The new class of fellows will be honored at the society’s meeting next month in Portland, Oregon. But US consular officials have derailed Ardalan’s application for a visa after telling him that US government records show he was arrested in the US in 1983 for an unspecified offense. They also say that he may have been involved in deportation proceedings 20 years earlier.Ardalan denies both charges, and his US colleagues say that the State Department is making a big mistake. “He is precisely the kind of person who should be welcomed to the US,” says Stanford University physicist Herman Winick.