Honoring Fermi Award Winners

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

President Barack Obama greeted the 2010 Fermi Award winners, physicists Mildred S. Dresselhaus and Burton Richter, and their spouses, at the White House on May 7, 2012. 

Both Dresselhaus and Richter served as Presidents of the APS.  Dresselhaus, who is also this year’s winner of the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience, is Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT, and Richter, a 1976 Nobel Laureate, is Professor Emeritus at Stanford and the former Director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. In the picture, President Obama chats with (l to r) Gene and Mildred Dresselhaus, and Laurose and Burton Richter. The Enrico Fermi Award is one of the government’s oldest and most prestigious awards for scientific achievement.