DOE Presents E. O. Lawrence Award

Three physicists, an astrophysicist, a chemist, and a mechanical engineer were among the winners of this year’s E. O. Lawrence Award, presented by the US Department of Energy last month at a ceremony in Washington, DC. The annual prize honors contributions to the development, use, or control of nuclear energy, which the department broadly defines to include the science and technology of nuclear, atomic, molecular, and particle interactions and effects. Each award comes with a gold medal, a citation, and $50 000.

Nathaniel J. Fisch received the award in the nuclear technology category for his “discovery of ways to use plasma waves to produce currents in fusion tokamaks,” according to the citation. P“These toroidal currents,” the citation adds, “enable tokamak reactors to operate continuously, which is necessary for an economical and practical fusion reactor.” Fisch is a professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University.

The award for physics went to Claire E. Max, professor and astronomer with the Center for Adaptive Optics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a physicist with the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The citation recognized Max for her “contributions to the theory of laser guide star adaptive optics and its application in ground-based astronomy to correct the blurring of telescopic images caused by light passing through the atmosphere.”

Fred N. Mortensen won the award in the national security category for his “outstanding technical contributions in nuclear weapons design and for his leadership and expert judgment that have enabled the continued certification of the safety and reliability of nuclear weapons in an era without nuclear testing.” He is a laboratory fellow in the thermonuclear applications group at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

Richard J. Saykally, professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, received the chemistry award for his “invention of new, powerful methods such as velocity modulation spectroscopy to study the structure of molecular ions,” according to the citation.

In the materials research category, DOE presented the award to Ivan K. Schuller, professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego, for “creating the field of metallic super-lattices and recognizing the impact of these materials on magnetism and superconductivity.”

Greg Swift, who received the environmental science and technology award, was cited for “developing the theory of thermoacoustic heat engines and for designing and building these engines and refrigerators that use the power of sound to operate at high efficiency with no moving parts.” He is a fellow in LANL’s condensed matter and thermal physics group.