APS to Present Awards at April Meeting

At its meeting next month in Philadelphia, the American Physical Society will hold a ceremonial prize session in honor of 16 recipients.

The Hans Bethe Prize will go to Michael Wiescher, Freimann Professor of Physics at the University of Notre Dame and director of the Joint Institute of Nuclear Astrophysics. APS is honoring Wiescher for his “contributions to the experimental foundation of nuclear astrophysics, especially the delineation of the processes involved in explosive hydrogen burning in novae and x-ray bursters and for providing an intellectual bridge between experimental nuclear astrophysicists and their theoretical colleagues.”

“Leadership in resolving the solar neutrino problem with the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory” is why APS has chosen Arthur Bruce McDonald as the recipient of this year’s Tom W. Bonner Prize. McDonald is the University Research Chair in Physics at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and director of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.

Homer A. Neal, Samuel A. Goudsmit Distinguished University Professor of Physics and director of the Atlas Collaboratory Project at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, will garner the Edward A. Bouchet Award. APS is recognizing Neal for his “significant contributions to experimental high-energy physics, for his important role in formulating governmental science policy, for his service as a university administrator at several universities, and for his advocacy of diversity and educational opportunity at all levels.”

The corecipients of the inaugural Einstein Prize are John A. Wheeler and the late Peter G. Bergmann. They are being honored for their “pioneering investigations in general relativity, including gravitational radiation, quantum gravity, black holes, space-time singularities, and symmetries in Einstein’s equations, and for leadership and inspiration to generations of researchers in general relativity.” Wheeler is a professor of physics emeritus at Princeton University. Bergmann, who died on 19 October 2002, was an emeritus professor of physics at Syracuse University.

Melba Newell Phillips, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Chicago, will receive the Joseph A. Burton Forum Award. APS is recognizing Phillips for her “tireless efforts in physics education, for continued work in preserving the history of physics as well as other service to the physics community, for her role in founding the Federation of American Scientists, and as a model of a principled scientist.”

Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat and James York will share the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics, given jointly by APS and the American Institute of Physics. According to the citation, the prize is being awarded for their “separate as well as joint work in proving the existence and uniqueness of solutions to Einstein’s gravitational field equations for a variety of sources, and for formulating these equations so as to improve numerical solution procedures with relevance to realistic physical systems.” Choquet-Bruhat is a professor emeritus at the Pierre and Marie Curie University (University of Paris VI) in France. York is a professor in the physics department and in the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research at Cornell University.

Frank Wilczek, Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at MIT, will take home the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize for his “role in the development of asymptotic freedom and other aspects of quantum chromodynamics, a cornerstone of the standard model; for his remarkable versatility in research in condensed matter and astrophysics as well as particle physics; and for his outstanding ability to lecture and write with clarity, profundity, and enthusiasm.”

The Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award will go to Chung-Pei Michele Ma, associate professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. Ma is being recognized for her “important contributions to theoretical astrophysics, particularly in the areas of relativistic evolution of density perturbations, testing of structure formation models with massive neutrinos, and the clustering and dynamics of dark matter halos around galaxies.”

Karsten Heeger, Chamberlain Fellow in the physics division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, will receive the Dissertation in Nuclear Physics Award for his “role in the generation and analysis of the data from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, and the resulting resolution of the solar neutrino problem.” Heeger’s thesis work was done under the guidance of R. G. Hamish Robertson at the University of Washington, Seattle.

William Willis, professor of physics at Columbia University, will receive the W. K. H. Panofsky Prize. He is being recognized for playing a “leading role in the development and exploitation of innovative techniques now widely adopted in particle physics, including liquid argon calorimetry, electron identification by detection of transition radiation, and hyperon beams.”

APS has selected Alfred Mueller and George Sterman to share the J. J. Sakurai Prize. They are being cited for “developing concepts and techniques in QCD [quantum chromodynamics], such as infrared safety and factorization in hard processes, which permitted precise quantitative predictions and experimental tests, and thereby helped to establish QCD as the theory of the strong interactions.” Mueller is a professor of physics at Columbia University. Sterman is a professor of physics and astronomy and director of the C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics, at Stony Brook University.

Robert Socolow, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University, will receive the Leo Szilard Lectureship Award. He is being cited for his “leadership in establishing energy and environmental problems as legitimate research fields for physicists” and for “demonstrating that these broadly defined problems can be addressed with the highest scientific standards.”

Helen T. Edwards, head of the photoinjector group in the beams division at Fermilab, will garner the Robert R. Wilson Prize for her “pivotal achievement and critical contribution as the leader in the design, construction, commissioning, and operation of the Tevatron” and for her “continued contributions to the development of high gradient superconducting linear accelerators as well as bright and intense electron sources.”

APS has also announced that the 2003 Francis Pipkin Award will go to Eric Hessels, professor and Canada Research Chair in atomic physics in the department of physics and astronomy at York University in Toronto. He is being acknowledged for “a wide range of high precision measurements to test fundamental interactions in atomic physics, especially fine structure splittings in helium as a measure of the fine structure constant, and for an innovative experimental technique to create atoms of antihydrogen.” Hessels will be recognized at a meeting of the society’s division of atomic, molecular, and optical physics in Boulder, Colorado, in May.