In Brief

Starting in September, Dudley Herschbach will be entering a delocalized state, dividing his time between Harvard University, where he is the Frank B. Baird Jr Research Professor of Science emeritus in the department of chemistry and chemical biology, and Texas A&M University, where he has accepted a position as professor of physics for one semester each year in the physics department’s chemical physics program.

Gérard Mourou, Szymon Suckewer, and Sune Svanberg are the recipients of this year’s Willis E. Lamb Medal, presented in January at the 35th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics. Director of the laboratory of applied optics at France’s école Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées and école Polytechnique, Mourou was cited “for outstanding contributions to laser science, especially the development of short-pulse high-power lasers.” Suckewer, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University, was recognized “for outstanding contributions to laser science, especially the development of the x-ray laser.” Svanberg was honored “for outstanding contributions to medical physics, especially laser medical diagnostics and treatment.” He heads the atomic physics division at the Lund Institute of Technology in Sweden.

Lee W. Hartmann, an astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will begin on 1 September as a professor in the department of astronomy at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Hartmann started working at the observatory in 1984.