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In Brief
- In April, the APS Executive Board and Council approved the establishment of a new Topical Group on Gravitation, based on a petition signed by 244 APS members. Areas of interest will include experiments and observations related to the detection and interpretation of gravitational waves, experimental tests of gravitational theories, computational general relativity, relativistic astrophysics, solutions to Einstein's equations and their properties, alternative theories of gravity, classical and quantum cosmology, and quantum gravity. According to Beverly Berger, a professor of physics at Michigan's Oakland University who organized the petition drive, organizing a topical group will provide "a unified focus for these areas of current research which now span several divisions of the Society."
- The APS Topical Group on Laser Science (LSTG) is continuing its sponsorship of the Distinguished Traveling Lecturer Program. Established in 1992, the program is intended to bring distinguished scientists to predominantly undergraduate colleges and universities. Lecturers visit selected academic institutions for two days, during which time they give a public lecture open to the entire academic community, and meet informally with students and faculty. They may also give guest lectures in classes related to laser science. The lecturers for the 1995-1996 academic year, and their respective topics, are Yuen-Ron Shen (University of California, Berkeley), nonlinear optics; Steven Chu (Stanford University), optical cooling and trapping of atoms; and Jeffrey Kimble (Caltech), quantum optics.
APS members at prospective host institutions who are interested in requesting a lecturer should submit a letter by January 20, 1996, requesting a particular lecturer and including a list of preferred dates. Application letters should also contain a brief description of the institution, its undergraduate students, and an estimate of the number of students likely to participate, to John C. Miller, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, MS 6125, Bldg. 4500S, Room S118, P.O. Box 2008, Oak Ridge, TN 37831. Priority will be given to those institutions that are not major research centers and do not have extensive resources for similar programs.
- Applications are currently being accepted for the 1996-1997 Fulbright Scholar Awards for U.S. Faculty and Professionals, a program that includes some 1,000 grants for research, combined research and lecturing, or university lecturing in nearly 140 countries. Awards range from two months to a full academic year, and many assignments are flexible to meet the needs of the grantee. Openings exist in almost every area of the humanities, social sciences, natural and applied sciences, the arts, and professional fields such as business, journalism, and law. The deadline for applications is August 1, 1995. For further information and application materials, contact the Council for International Exchange of Scholars
- The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation has awarded the following APS members Humboldt Research Awards for Foreign Scholars, which provide internationally recognized scholars with the opportunity to spend between four and 12 months conducting research at German institutions: Steven Chu (Stanford University), Norman Glendenning (University of California), Michael Nieto (Los Alamos National Laboratory), and Thomas Reinecke (Naval Research Laboratory). In addition, three young APS members were awarded research fellowships for outstanding young scientists to embark on long-term collaborative research projects in Germany: Allen Caldwell (Columbia University), Peter Jacobs (Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory), and Xiodong Li (Ohio University). Since 1952, the Foundation has provided more than 3,500 scholars from the U.S. and Canada _ and more than 16,000 scholars worldwide _ with international research opportunities. For more information, contact Dr. Bernard Stein, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
©1995 - 2013, AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY
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