Prize Recipient

Joseph Johnson III
Florida A&M University

Citation:

"For outstanding research achievements in investigation of turbulent and non-equilibrium fluids, and for contributions to the development of minority scientists and engineers."

Background:

Joseph A. Johnson III was born in Tennessee and graduated from Fisk University with a BA in 1960 and Yale University with a Ph D in 1965. He has held research positions with Sikorsky Aircraft Company and Bell Telephone Laboratories. He has held faculty appointments at Yale University, Southern University, Rutgers University, The City College (where he was named Herbert Kayser Professor of Science and Engineering) and now at Florida A & M University where he is Distinguished Professor of Science and Engineering and Professor of Physics and mechanical Engineering. Prof. Johnson is also Director of the NASA HBCU Research Center for Nonlinear and Nonequilibrium Aeroscience at Florida A & M University. Prof. Johnson has investigated a wide variety of fundamental fluid and plasma phenomena.

Prof. Johnson also has played an important role, throughout his career, in the development of minority American Scientists both as a science administrator and a science teacher. His achievements as a scientist and educator have been recognized. In November of 1989, Prof. Johnson was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. In October of 1990, Prof. Johnson was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society and during the same month, a Member of the Third World Academy of Sciences. He was elected in March, 1992, as a Charter Fellow of the National Society of Black Physicists and was cited for "distinguished contributions to research in physics and the related physical and engineering sciences, distinguished contributions to physics education, and contributions of the most noteworthy sort to the general goals of NSBP."