In Brief

Ralph Eichler took over the directorship of the Swiss-based Paul Scherrer Institute in July, succeeding Meinrad K. Eberle, who retired after 10 years in that position. Eichler previously was the deputy director and head of the particles and matter division of the institute. He will remain a part-time professor of particle physics at ETH Zürich.

Next month, Peter Main will become the director of physics education for the UK’s Institute of Physics, succeeding Peter Cooper, who will be leaving to join the London Mathematical Society. Main heads the school of physics and astronomy at the University of Nottingham in the UK.

Since 1992, the Alvin Van Valkenburg Award has been presented at the meetings of the Gordon Research Conference on Research at High Pressure, held biannually in Meriden, New Hampshire. The award is given in recognition of a promising young scientist in this field. This year’s award, given in June, went to Yongjae Lee, a postdoctoral fellow in the physics department at Brookhaven National Laboratory, for his work on pressure-induced swelling of zeolites, using the diamond anvil cell of which Van Valkenburg was a coinventor.

Mark A. Kasevich will join the faculty of Stanford University this month as a professor of physics. He previously was a professor of physics at Yale University.

In a ceremony in Vienna next month, the general assembly of the Austrian Research Institute for Chemistry and Technology will bestow its 2002 Herman F. Mark Medal on Koichi Hatada, Frank E. Karasz, and Franz Sommer for their work on polymers. Hatada retired in 1998 after serving as Osaka University’s vice president. Karasz is the Silvio O. Conte Distinguished Professor of Polymer Science and Engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Sommer recently retired as the managing director of technology and head of R&D at Semperit Technical Products in Wimpassing, Austria.