2020 APS Fall Prize & Award Recipients

The APS Prizes and Awards recognize outstanding achievements in research, education, and public service. With few exceptions, they are open to all members of the scientific community in the US and abroad. The nomination and selection procedure, involving APS-appointed selection committees, guarantees high standards and prestige.

Each year, hundreds of nominations pour into the APS Honors Department from people around the world highlighting the work of their colleagues.  Recipients of the APS prizes and awards are announced in two groups, one in the Spring and then a second set in the Fall.  

In spite of the serious challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic this year, the respective selection committees, with support from the APS Honors team, have completed their work and the list of Fall recipients appears below. 

Of special note: the Fall honors this year include the Landau-Spitzer Award, which is given every two years and is a joint award of APS and the European Physical Society. The 2020 Landau-Spitzer Award goes to a collaboration between researchers at the University of Rochester (New York, US) and the University of Bordeaux-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA) in France. The collaboration was recognized for outstanding experimental and simulation research in shock ignition for inertial confinement fusion. 

The Stanley Corrsin Award recognizes a particularly influential contribution to fundamental fluid dynamics.

“For seminal contributions revealing the physics of fragmentation and mixing.”

Emmanuel Villermaux, Aix-Marseille University

The John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research focuses specifically on achievements in plasma physics research.

“For generating Weibel-mediated collisionless shocks in the laboratory, impacting a broad range of energetic astrophysical scenarios, plasma physics, and experiments using high energy and high power lasers conducted at basic plasma science facilities.”

Hideaki Takabe, Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden Rossendorf
Hye-Sook Park, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Dmitri Ryutov, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (retired)
James Steven Ross, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Frederico Fiuza, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Youichi Sakawa, Institute of Laser Engineering, Osaka University
Anatoly Spitkovsky, Princeton University
Christoph Niemann, University of California, Los Angeles
William Fox, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
R Paul Drake, University of Michigan
Gianluca Gregori, University of Oxford

The Fluid Dynamics Prize recognizes outstanding achievement in fluid dynamics research.

“For fundamental contributions to fluid dynamics, especially turbulence from quantum to astrophysical scales.”

Katepalli Sreenivasan, New York University

The Stuart Jay Freedman Award in Experimental Nuclear Physics honors an outstanding early career experimentalist in nuclear physics.

“For pioneering work in experimental investigations of jet quenching in quark-gluon plasma produced by ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions.”

Marta Verweij, Utrecht University

The Landau-Spitzer Award is given for outstanding contributions in plasma physics and for advancing the collaboration and unity between Europe and the United States of America.  

“For major advancements of the shock ignition concept through collaborative experimental and simulation efforts in inertial confinement fusion research.”

Riccardo Betti, University of Rochester
Alexis Casner, University of Bordeaux-CNRS-CEA
Xavier Ribeyre, University of Bordeaux-CNRS-CEA
Wolfgang Theobald, University of Rochester

The James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics recognizes outstanding contributions to plasma physics broadly.

“For leadership in and pioneering contributions to the theory and kinetic simulations of nonlinear processes in plasma-based acceleration, and relativistically intense laser and beam plasma interactions.”

Warren Bicknell Mori, University of California, Los Angeles 

The Thomas H. Stix Award for Outstanding Early Career Contributions to Plasma Physics Research recognizes contributions to plasma physics research by early career physicists.

“For fundamental advances to the kinetic theory of strongly-coupled plasma and plasma sheaths.”

Scott Baalrud, University of Iowa

The Andreas Acrivos Dissertation Award in Fluid Dynamics recognizes exceptional young scientists who have performed original doctoral thesis work of outstanding scientific quality and achievement in the area of fluid dynamics. 

“For creative and insightful use of theory, simulation, and experiment to reveal the dynamics of non-spherical inertial particles in wave-dominated flows, with application to the behavior of microplastic pollution in the ocean.”

Michelle DiBenedetto, Stanford University

The Marshall N. Rosenbluth Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award goes to a young plasma physicist who has performed original thesis work of outstanding scientific quality and achievement.

“For elegantly describing three-wave coupling in plasma modified by oblique magnetic fields, identifying applications including plasma-based laser amplifiers, and adapting quantum field theory to describe plasma physics in the strong-field regime.”

Yuan Shi, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 

For more information on the recipients, please visit the APS Honors webpage.