Prize Recipient

Gregory Joseph Schmid
Duke University

Citation:

"For an innovative study of the radiative capture of polarized protons by deuterons below 80 KeV. The extraordinary care and persistence of his work and the depth of his involvement at all stages of the experiment and in the analysis have produced new insights into nuclear reactions at these very low energies. These results are important for our understanding of protostellar evolution and of the few-nucleon system as well."

Background:

Gregory J. Schmid received a BS degree in Physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in May of 1989 and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from Duke University in September of 1995 (thesis advisor: Henry Weller). Since receiving his Ph.D., Schmid has been working as a postdoctoral fellow in the nuclear science division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, CA. His research at LBL has focused on two separate topics: that of helping to design a new generation of gamma-ray detector.; and also that of doing research in nuclear structure physics. His current work in detector design has dealt with writing computer Monte Carlo codes and cluster identification routines so as to maximize the performance of a proposed highly segmented Ge detector ("GRETA"). His work in nuclear structure physics has dealt with extending the known level scheme of 235U by using the enormous resolving power of Gammasphere.