German Physical Society Gives Awards

At its annual meeting in Hannover, Germany, last month, the German Physical Society honored the following individuals with prizes or medals for 2003.

Martin C. Gutzwiller received the society’s most important award for theoretical physics, the Max Planck Medal, for his contributions to the quantum theory of condensed matter. Gutzwiller is an IBM research staff member emeritus and an adjunct professor of physics at Yale University.

The society’s top award for experimental physics, the Stern-Gerlach Medal, went to Reinhard Genzel, director at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, near Munich, and a physics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was recognized for his contributions to infrared astronomy and adaptive optics.

Brian Foster was honored with the Max Born Prize, given jointly by the society and the UK’s Institute of Physics for outstanding contributions to physics. Foster, who was recognized for his contributions to experimental particle physics, is a professor of experimental physics at the University of Bristol in the UK.

The Gentner-Kastler Prize, presented jointly by the German Physical Society and the French Physical Society, went to Hartmut Löwen, professor of physics in the Heinrich Heine University’s Institute of Theoretical Physics, in Düsseldorf. He was cited for his research on colloidal phenomena in particular and his contributions to soft matter physics in general.

Christoph H. Keitel was the recipient of the Gustav-Hertz Prize, which is given to an outstanding young physicist. The society acknowledged his contributions to the theory of interaction between light and matter. Keitel is a research group leader and lecturer in the University of Freiburg’s Institute of Physics.

Christian Peth, a scientist in the optics characterization group at the Laser Laboratory in Göttingen, was awarded the Georg Simon Ohm Prize for his development of a laser-driven gaseous target used for the production of soft x-rays.

Klaas Bergmann, professor of physics at the Kaiserslautern University of Technology, received the Robert Wichard Pohl Prize for his contributions to experimental molecular physics, especially for the development of the so-called STIRAP method.

The Walter Schottky Prize, which honors contributions by young researchers in the field of condensed matter physics, was presented to Jurgen Smet. A senior scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Physics in Stuttgart, he was cited for his experimental research on quantum Hall systems involving the quasi-particle characteristics of composite fermions.

Fritz Haake, professor of theoretical physics at the University of Duisburgg–Essen, won the Marian Smoluchowski–Emil Warburg Physics Prize for his contributions to the theory of quantum optics and quantum chaos. The prize, presented jointly by the German Physical Society and the Polish Physical Society, is given for outstanding contributions to pure or applied physics.

Uta Fritze–von Alvensleben, assistant professor at the University of Göttingen, received the Hertha Sponer Prize, the society’s award for young outstanding female physicists. She was cited for her research on the formation and evolution of galaxies, in particular the development of computer models.