Bahcall Awarded Dan David Prize

John Bahcall has won $1 million. A theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, Bahcall is being honored with a Dan David prize for his wide-ranging contributions to astrophysics, from the interpretation of quasar absorption lines, to the first detection of a neutron star companion, to his calculations on solar neutrinos, which predicted a flux roughly three times greater than that observed on Earth. The shortfall in solar neutrinos is now thought to be caused by neutrino oscillations (see Physics Today, December 2002, page 16 ).

“This prize is really a recognition of the field,” says Bahcall. “Successes are not achieved in a vacuum. They are achieved as a result of mutual interactions among many people.”

The Tel Aviv-based Dan David Foundation last year began annually honoring three individuals or organizations for enhancing knowledge about the past, present, and future. Bahcall is the winner in this year’s “future” category, cosmology and astronomy, and the first physicist to win a Dan David prize. For the “past,” the foundation focused on paleoanthropology and is honoring Michel Brunet, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Poitiers in France, and for the “present,” this year’s topic is print and electronic media, with the prize shared by photographer James Nachtwey and documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, both of the US. The prizes will be bestowed on 18 May in a ceremony at Tel Aviv University.

An unusual condition of the prize is that recipients give 10% of their winnings to young researchers in their own fields. That money goes to 20 graduate students, with 10 at Tel Aviv University and 10 around the world each receiving a $15 000 scholarship.

The Dan David prize has an endowment of $100 million from Dan David, the president of Photo-Me International, the London-based maker of automated photo booths.