Prize Recipient

Matthew Sands
University of California, Santa Cruz

Citation:

"For his many contributions to accelerator physics and the development of electron-positron and proton colliders and for his importance as teacher and role model for many generations of scientists."

Background:

Dr. Sands received his BA from Clark University in 1940 and his MA from Rice. He then worked at the Naval Ordnance and Los Alamos Laboratories where he co-authored a book on pulse electronics. He received a Ph.D. from MIT in 1948 for work on cosmic rays, and then joined the MIT faculty. In 1950 he moved to CalTech where he helped build and used a 1.5 Gev electron synchrotron. He was the first to show (theoretically and then experimentally) the importance of quantum effects in electron accelerators; he proposed a high energy proton synchtrotron (300 Gev), using injection from a booster; co-authored the Feynman Lectures on Physics. In 1963 he became Deputy Director for the construction and early operation of SLAC; worked on the design of SPEAR; and wrote a monograph on electron storage rings. From 1969 until 1985 he taught at University of California, Santa Cruz, where he is now Professor Emeritus. During 1968 - 1994 he studied beam instabilities, wake fields, beam-cavity interactions, linear colliders, etc. at Frascati, DESY, Orsay, and SLAC.

Dr. Sands is an APS Fellow, founding member of FAS, and a member of both the AAPT and the AAAS. He was a member of the Commission on College Physics (1960-66); consultant to PSAC, DOD and ACDA on weapons and disarmament (1961-67). He received a Fulbright Scholarship in 1952, a Distinguished Service Award from the AAPT (1972) and the 1990 Prize of the US Particle Accelerator School.

Selection Committee:

Claudio Pellegrini (Chair), Ilan Ben-Zvi, Helen Thom Edwards, Hermann A Grunder (Vice Chair), Albert J. Hofmann ('96 Rcpnt)