Hopfield Is New APS Vice President

John Hopfield became vice president of the American Physical Society for 2005, succeeding John Bahcall (see Physics Today, December 2003, page 80 ). Hopfield took office on 1 January and will automatically become president-elect in 2006 and president in 2007. Marvin L. Cohen serves as the society’s president for 2005 (see Physics Today, November 2002, page 88 ).

Hopfield’s parents met as graduate students in physics at the University of California, Berkeley; he carried on the family study of physics by earning a PhD from Cornell University in 1958. In his thesis, he formulated a field-theoretic description of the interaction of light with excitons in solids. After completing his studies at Cornell, he joined the theoretical group at Lucent Technologies’ Bell Labs for two years, then began his teaching career at Berkeley in 1961.

In 1964 Hopfield became a professor of physics at Princeton University, where he continued his research on the interaction of light with solids. He shared APS’s Oliver E. Buckley Prize with D. G. Thomas in 1969. He left Princeton in 1980 to become a professor of chemistry and biology at Caltech after his research interests turned toward the interface between physics and biology. He won APS’s Biological Physics Prize in 1985. Hopfield returned to Princeton in 1996, where he is the Howard Prior Professor of Molecular Biology and chair of the department of molecular biology.

“The institutions essential for physics to prosper do not function well unless serious scientists are enthusiastic about taking leadership roles,” Hopfield said after his election. “I’m looking forward to the opportunity to put something back into an institution so important to the healthy state of American physics, and an institution that behind the scenes has helped me to have a fulfilling professional life.”

In other APS election news, Thomas Rosenbaum was selected chair-elect of the APS nominating committee for 2005. He is a professor of physics and vice president for research at the University of Chicago. Two general councillors were chosen by the society’s members to serve three-year terms beginning in 2005: Ann Orel is a professor in the department of applied science at the University of California, Davis; Richart Slusher is director of the quantum information and optics research department at Bell Labs.