In Brief

Last month, Paul F. Goldsmith stepped down as director of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center in Ithaca, New York. Goldsmith, who had served in that post for the past 10 years, plans to continue an affiliation with Cornell University, where he is the James Weeks Professor of Physical Science in the astronomy department.

In November, Steve B. Howell became a research professor in the Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the University of California, Riverside. He had headed the astrophysics group at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona.

The Canadian Chancellery of Honours has named Bill Buyers asone of the recipients of a Commemorative Medal for the Golden Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Principal research officer with the National Research Council at Chalk River Laboratories, Buyers received the medal last month at a ceremony in Ottawa. The Commemorative Medal, created in 2002 to mark the 50th anniversary of the queen’s accession to the throne, honors those who have made a significant contribution to Canada or have made an achievement abroad that brings credit to Canada.

At a gala dinner in November at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec, Tito Scaiano was awarded the 2002 Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering in recognition of his work on the interactions of light and molecules. The prize, the highest honor bestowed by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, guarantees that Scaiano will receive, over the next five years, Can$250 000 (about $160 000) to supplement his existing research funding of Can$1 million (about $640 000) from NSERC. Aprofessor of chemistry at the University of Ottawa, Scaiano became, in 2000, the university’s first Distinguished University Professor.

Henry McDonald joined the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga late last fall as a Distinguished Professor of Computational Engineering and Chair of Excellence in Engineering. He previously served for more than six years as director of NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California.

In November, Thomas Galinski was named head of space science at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Bonn. He previously headed satellite communications at DLR.

Humberto Campins joined the University of Central Florida in Orlando last summer as the Provost Research Professor of Physics and Astronomy. He plans to begin a planetary science group in the physics department. He was previously an adjunct faculty member in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and a program officer at Research Corp in Tucson.

At its fall meeting in Boston last month, the Materials Research Society presented the 2002 Von Hippel Award, its highest honor, to Howard Birnbaum. A director emeritus of the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Birnbaum was cited for his “seminal contributions to our understanding of intrinsic point defects, hydrogen in metals, and grain boundary segregation, especially as these effects relate to mechanical properties.” His work, adds the citation, “has also stimulated, directed, and influenced interdisciplinary research throughout the materials community.” The award includes a $10 000 cash prize.

At the same meeting, the Materials Research Society handed out other awards, including the 2002 MRS Medal to Uzi Landman and Charles M. Lieber. Landman was recognized for his “molecular dynamics simulations elucidating the microscopic behavior of solid and liquid interfacial junctions and atomistic processes of tribology.” Landman is director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Computational Materials Science and is the Regents’ and Institute Professor in the School of Physics. The society acknowledged Lieber for his “controlled synthesis of nanowire and nanotube materials.” Lieber is the Mark Hyman Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University. The 2002 Turnbull Lecturer Award went to Robert Wolfgang Cahn, honorary distinguished research fellow in the department of materials science and metallurgy at the University of Cambridge, UK. He was honored for his “service to the materials science community through writing, editing, mentoring, and fostering of international understanding, as well as for outstanding contributions to the development of physical metallurgy through research on recovery and re-crystallization, rapid solidification, and intermetallic compounds.”

Michael Woolfson, emeritus professor of physics at the University of York in the UK, received the sixth Ewald Prize, which was presented during the International Union of Crystallography Congress held this past August in Geneva, Switzerland. He was honored for his “exceptional contributions in developing the conceptual and theoretical framework of direct methods along with the algorithm design and computer programs for automatic solutions that changed the face of structural science,” according to the award citation. He also was recognized for his “contributions to crystallographic education and international collaboration, which have strengthened the intellectual development of crystallographers worldwide.” The prize included a medal, a certificate, and $30 000.