Prize Recipient

Joel M. Moss
Los Alamos National Laboratory

"For his pioneering experiments using dimuon production in proton-nucleus interactions which demonstrate that there is no antiquark enhancement in nuclei, and which delineate the characteristics of charmonium and open charm production in nuclear systems."

Dr. Moss received his B.S. degree from Fort Hayes State University in 1964, and his Ph.D. in nuclear chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1969. He spent two periods as a postdoctoral fellow: From 1969­71 at the Centre d'tudes Nuclaires de Saclay, France, and 1971­73 in the Physics Department of the University of Minnesota. In 1973 he accepted a faculty position in the Physics Department of Texas A&M University where he carried out an extensive series of experimental studies of nuclear giant resonances using beams at the Texas A&M cyclotron.

In addition he developed the technique of focal­plane polarimetry using a magnetic spectrograph. In 1979 he accepted at position in the Physics Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory. There, he and colleagues further developed the techniques of focal­plane polarimetry at LAMPF and the Indiana University Cyclotron Facility, and applied them to the study of the nuclear spin response function. A well­known application was to the search for pionic collectivity in nuclei. The implications of its apparent absence are still the subject of much debate.

In 1986 he became spokesman of a new collaboration formed (experiment E772) to study dimuon production in proton­ nucleus collisions using 800 GeV protons at Fermilab's Tevatron. In the following years, he and Los Alamos colleagues played major roles in two further Fermilab experiments that emphasized aspects of the parton structure of nucleons and nuclei. His current interests are aimed at the future RHIC program, using the PHENIX detector to study high­energy nuclear collisions and the spin structure of the nucleon.

Dr. Moss is a Fellow of the APS, and has served on the Nuclear Sciences Advisory Committee.

Noemie Benczer Koller (Chair) John Harris, R G Hamish Robertson ('97 Recipient), Peter Paul (Vice Chair), Stephen J Wallace