L’Oréal and UNESCO Honor Five Women Physicists

In a special ceremony in Paris last month, cosmetics giant L’Oréal and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization recognized five women, one from each continent, with the L’Oréal–UNESCO for Women in Science Awards. This year’s recipients are Zohra Ben Lakhdar, Belita Koiller, Dominique Langevin, Myriam P. Sarachik, and Fumiko Yonezawa. The awards, which alternate each year between the life sciences and materials science (including physics and chemistry), are each accompanied by a cash prize of $100 000. This year’s presentation in materials science appropriately coincides with the World Year of Physics 2005.

Ben Lakhdar, the laureate for Africa, is a professor of physics at the University of Tunis in Tunisia. She is being honored “for her experiments and models on infrared spectroscopy and its applications to pollution detection and medicine,” according to the citation. She “has greatly furthered the development of optics and photonics as a scientific discipline in Tunisia and all of Africa” and has made “a number of valuable contributions to optical science and its applications in many different areas.”

Koiller was chosen as the laureate for Latin America “for her innovative theoretical research on electrons in disordered materials such as glass.” The selection jury adds, “Belita Koiller is a renowned theorist, whose innovative work has helped improve the understanding of complex condensed matter systems.” She is a professor of physics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

“For her fundamental investigations of detergents, emulsions, and foams,” Langevin is the laureate for Europe. The jury praised the valuable contributions that her work has made in industry, “from petroleum to laundry detergents, milk proteins, hair products, nuclear waste treatment, and even the construction of a foam module for the International Space Station.” She is a director of research in the laboratory for the physics of solids at the University of Paris–Sud in Orsay, France.

A distinguished professor of physics at the City College of New York, Sarachik was selected as the laureate for North America “for important experiments on electrical conduction and the transition between metals and insulators.” The jury acknowledged in particular her “seminal contributions to Kondo physics, a central theme in condensed matter physics, and the metal–insulator transition.”

Yonezawa, professor emeritus of physics at Keio University in Yokohama, Japan, is the laureate for Asia–Pacific. She is being recognized “for her pioneering theory and computer simulations of amorphous semiconductors and liquid metals.” She has “accomplished monumental work in the field of glass transition,” and with her graduate students “earned international recognition for their discovery of a completely new mechanism in metal–nonmetal transition.”