Franklin institute honors scientists, educators

Uncommon insight and out-of-the-box thinking have been acknowledged and celebrated by the Franklin Institute, which annually honors trailblazers in the fields of science, business, and technology for their discoveries and achievements. Awards were presented during an April ceremony at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Of the nine receiving awards this year, four do physics-related work.

Norman R. Augustine, retired CEO and chairman of Lockheed Martin Corp, received the Bower Award for Business Leadership. He was selected “for his leadership of Lockheed Martin, his extensive public service, and implications for economic competitiveness driven by innovation and improved science and math education.” Augustine is an author of the 2005 National Academy of Sciences report Rising Above the Gathering Storm (see Physics Today, December 2005, page 25 ).

Taking home the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth and Environmental Science was Steven W. Squyres, Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University. He was selected for his “discovery of water on Mars through ‘robotic geologists,’ the Mars Exploration Rovers, which have led to a greater understanding of the potential for life on other planets and life’s evolution on Earth.”

Arthur B. McDonald and Yoji Totsuka were corecipients of the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics “for their discovery that the three known types of elementary particles called neutrinos change into one another when traveling long distances, and that neutrinos have mass.” McDonald is the Gordon and Patricia Gray Chair in particle astrophysics and the director of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Institute at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada; Totsuka is Special University Professor Emeritus at the University of Tokyo and former director of KEK, Japan’s high-energy accelerator research organization.

Awards were presented during an April ceremony at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.