In Brief

Britain’s Royal Meteorological Society is presenting this year’s Symons Gold Medal, its most prestigious award, to Raymond Hide at an awards dinner this month in Norwich, England. Among Hide’s other achievements, the society is acknowledging him for his “original and inspirational experimental and theoretical studies of nonlinear hydrodynamics and magneto-hydrodynamics of rotating fluids, and their application to understanding the dynamics of planetary atmosphere and interiors.” Hide is a senior research investigator in the mathematics department at Imperial College, London, and emeritus professor of physics at the University of Oxford.

Effective this month, Anthony M. Johnson is the new director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Photonics Research at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He holds joint faculty appointments as a professor in both the physics department and the computer science and electrical engineering department. He previously was the Foundation Professor of Optics & Photonics and Distinguished Professor of Physics at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. Since 1996, he had been the principal investigator and project director of NJIT’s multidisciplinary optical science and engineering program.