German Physical Society Bestows Honors

At its spring meeting in Munich later this month, the German Physical Society will recognize the following individuals for their achievements in physics.

Klaus Hepp will receive the Max Planck Medal, the society’s highest award for theoretical physics, for his “path-breaking contributions to quantum field theory and his research in the areas of laser physics and neuroscience.” Hepp is a professor emeritus of theoretical physics at ETH Zürich.

The society’s top honor for experimental physics, the Stern–Gerlach Medal, will go to Frank Steglich, director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Dresden. He is being recognized for his “pioneering discovery of superconductivity in the heavy-fermion metal CeCu₂Si₂ and for his seminal contributions to condensed matter physics, in particular, magnetism and superconductivity in strongly correlated electron systems.”

The Gentner–Kastler Prize, awarded jointly by the German Physical Society and the French Physical Society, will go to Dominique Langevin for her “outstanding contributions to soft matter physics, including emulsions, foams and such phenomena [as] capillary waves.” She is a professor at the Laboratory of Solid State Physics at the University of Paris–South in Orsay, France.

Klaus Blaum will receive the Gustav–Hertz Prize for his “excellent research on the measurement of the masses of short-lived atomic nuclei.” He is a research fellow at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.

Hans-Joachim Wilke, professor of physics education at the Technical University of Dresden, will receive the Robert Wichard Pohl Prize for his “outstanding contributions to physics education and for communicating physics to the general public.”

The Walter Schottky Prize will be presented to Markus Morgenstern. A senior scientist in the Institute of Applied Physics at the University of Hamburg, he is being honored for his “excellent research on the electronic properties of semiconductors.”

Myrjam Winning, who is completing her habilitation thesis and is a leader of the crystal plasticity research group at the Institute of Physical Metallurgy and Metal Physics at the University of Aachen, will receive the Hertha Sponer Prize. She is cited for her “seminal contributions to metallurgy and material sciences, in particular for her research on grain boundaries.”

During a ceremony in January, Matthias Scheffler was honored with the Max Born Prize, given jointly by the German Physical Society and the UK’s Institute of Physics. He was cited for his “outstanding contributions to theoretical surface physics, in particular for the combination of density-functional theory and statistical mechanics to describe crystal growth and catalysis processes.” Scheffler is director of the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin.