Case Contest Seeks 27 Great 20th Century Physicists

To celebrate the World Year of Physics, the physics department at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland is organizing the "27 Physicists Contest," open to participants in 3 categories: high school students, high school teachers, and college undergraduates.

The World Year of Physics, commemorating Einstein’s miracle year of 1905, also coincides with the centennial of the physics building at Case. In 1905, the names of 34 great pre-1905 physicists were engraved on the Case physics building. The names include the well-known, such as Archimedes and Newton to Ben Franklin and Maxwell, and also others not so widely familiar.

There is room on the building for 27 more names. The challenge of the contest is to vote for great 20^th-century physicists from a list of over 100 candidates prepared by the Case faculty. Participants in each of the three categories mentioned above can vote for up to 20 candidates. Three prizes will be awarded in each category to the participants whose lists most closely match the final list of 27 names. The deadline to participate is December 31^st.

The Case campus, the location of the famous 1887 Michelson-Morley ether-drift experiment, has been designated an Historical Physics Site by the APS (see APS News, May 2005).

To learn more about the contest, and to participate in it, visit the website http://www.phys.cwru.edu/events/WYOP/contest.php.