NAS Bestows Awards This Month
DOI: 10.1063/1.2408547
On 19 April, 16 individuals are being recognized by the National Academy of Sciences for their achievements in science. They, including the following seven scientists who work in physics or a related field, are receiving their awards in a ceremony during the academy’s annual meeting in Washington, DC.
Klaus Wyrtki receives the Alexander Agassiz Medal, which NAS awards every three years. Professor emeritus in the department of oceanography at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, Wyrtki is cited for his “fundamental contributions to the understanding of the oceanic general circulation of abyssal and thermocline waters and for providing the intellectual underpinning of our understanding of ENSO (El Niño).” He takes away a medal and a cash prize of $15 000.
The Comstock Prize in Physics, awarded approximately every five years and worth $20 000, is going to John N. Bahcall, Richard Black Professor of Natural Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Bahcall is acknowledged for his “many contributions to astrophysics, especially his definitive work on solar models and his crucial role in identifying and resolving the solar neutrino problem.”
Carlos Bustamante garners the Alexander Hollaender Award in Biophysics, which NAS hands out every three years, for his “ingenious use of atomic force microscopy and laser tweezers to study the biophysical properties of proteins, DNA, and RNA, one molecule at a time.” Bustamante has joint appointments as an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and professor of molecular and cell biology, physics, and chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. He also is chair of the advanced microscopy department in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s physical biosciences division. A purse of $20 000 accompanies the award.
The annual NAS Award in Chemical Sciences is going this year to Robert G. Parr, Wassily Hoeffding Professor of Chemical Physics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is honored for “being a pioneer, leader, and central figure in the development of density functional theory in chemistry and for his deep insights into quantum chemical calculations.” He is receiving a medal and $15 000 cash prize.
“Pioneering contributions and ingenuity in the creative design and development of photonic materials and devices” have earned Yoel Fink, Thomas B. King Assistant Professor of Materials Science at MIT, the NAS Award for Initiatives in Research. This annual prize, worth $15 000, recognizes innovative young scientists.
Donald G. Truhlar is honored with the NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing, presented annually, for his “incisive reviews on transition-state theory, potential energy surfaces, quantum scattering theory, and solvation models, which have informed and enlightened the chemical physics community for a generation.” Truhlar, Lloyd H. Reyerson Professor of Chemistry, Chemical Physics, and Scientific Computation, and director of the Supercomputing Institute at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, also receives a cash prize of $10 000.
NAS is presenting Vera C. Rubin, senior fellow with the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, with the James Craig Watson Medal, awarded every three years, for her “seminal observations of dark matter in galaxies, large-scale relative motions of galaxies, and for generous mentoring of young astronomers, men and women.” Rubin is receiving a medal and cash prize of $25 000 plus $25 000 to support her research.