Spring 2017 American Physical Society Prizes and Awards Announced

COLLEGE PARK, MD, October 11, 2016 – The American Physical Society (APS) has announced the Society’s Spring 2017 prize and award winners, and the 2016 Apker Award and Valley Prize recipients. With few exceptions, APS prizes and awards are open to all members of the scientific community in the U.S. and abroad. These honors are highly regarded, and represent critical recognition from the recipients' most discerning audience, their peers.

"Each year, the American Physical Society recognizes leading physicists through a variety of prizes and awards," said APS President Homer Neal. "We are proud to honor a spectrum of recipients, including outstanding early-career researchers, exceptional communicators and educators, and accomplished theorists and experimentalists working in every major field of physics."

The new honorees are:

David Adler Lectureship Award in the Field of Materials Physics (2017)
Heike E. Riel, IBM Research - Zurich, "for seminal achievements in the science and technology of nanoscale electronics, particularly the exploration of novel materials such as semiconducting nanowires, molecules and organic materials for future nanoscale devices, and outstanding presentations and outreach for general audiences."   

LeRoy Apker Award (2016)
Stephanie Gorczyca, University of San Diego, "for investigation into the effect of crowding on dynamics of DNA using single-molecule tracking techniques."
Nick Rivera, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "for important advances in the field of photonics and exceptional leadership of the Society of Physics Students."

Tom W. Bonner Prize in Nuclear Physics (2017)
Charles F. Perdrisat, College of William and Mary, "for groundbreaking measurements of nucleon structure, and discovering the unexpected behavior of the magnetic and electric nucleon form factors with changing momentum transfer."

Hans A. Bethe Prize (2017)
Stuart L. Shapiro, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, "for seminal and sustained contributions to understanding physical processes in compact object astrophysics, and advancing numerical relativity."

Edward A. Bouchet Award (2017)
Enrico J. Ramirez-Ruiz, University of California, Santa Cruz "for important contributions to the dynamics of plasma in extreme astrophysical environments, and advocating for more Hispanic students to enter astrophysics."

Herbert P. Broida Prize (2017)
Tilman Pfau, University of Stuttgart, "for pioneering, field-opening contributions to the physics of Rydberg atoms in ultracold and room-temperature gases, and for the first observation of ultralong-range polar Rydberg molecules."

Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize (2017)
Alexei Kitaev, California Institute of Technology, and Xiao-Gang Wen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "for theories of topological order and its consequences in a broad range of physical systems."

Joseph A. Burton Forum Award (2017)
Rush D. Holt, Jr., American Association for Advancement of Science, "for outstanding contributions as Member of Congress and CEO of the AAAS in utilizing scientific evidence to inform our government and public on important national and international issues and working to implement policies and legislation that advance our national interest and strengthen the U.S. scientific enterprise."

Davisson-Germer Prize in Atomic or Surface Physics (2017)
Stephen Kevan, University of Oregon, and Eli Rotenberg, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, "for the development of angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) leading to groundbreaking surface science."

Max Delbruck Prize in Biological Physics (2017)
Alan Perelson, Los Alamos National Laboratory, "for profound contributions to theoretical immunology, which bring insight and save lives."

John H. Dillon Medal (2017)
Moon J. Park, Pohang University of Science & Technology, "for incisive experiments elucidating the interplay of transport and morphology in nanostructured ion-containing polymer materials."

George E. Duvall Shock Compression Science Award (2017)
Marc André Meyers, University of California at San Diego, "for pioneering contributions to understanding extreme behavior in a wide range of materials undergoing shock-compression, including deformation, fracture, phase transformations, and chemical reactions."

Excellence in Physics Education Award (2017)
Contemporary Physics Education Project (℅ Howard Matis), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, "for leadership in providing educational materials on contemporary physics topics to students for over 25 years."

Einstein Prize (2017)
Robert M. Wald, The University of Chicago, "for fundamental contributions to classical and semiclassical gravity studies, in particular, the discovery of the general formula for black hole entropy, and for developing a rigorous formulation of quantum field theory in curved spacetime."

Herman Feshbach Prize in Theoretical Nuclear Physics (2017)
Joseph Carlson, Los Alamos National Laboratory, "for pioneering the development of quantum Monte Carlo techniques to solve key problems in nuclear structure physics, cold atom physics, and dense matter theory of relevance to neutron stars."

Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics (2017)
Carl M. Bender, Washington University, "for developing the theory of PT symmetry in quantum systems and sustained seminal contributions that have generated profound and creative new mathematics, impacted broad areas of experimental physics, and inspired generations of mathematical physicists."

Prize for Industrial Applications of Physics (2017)
Asad Khan, Kent Displays, "for novel contributions to the physics of bistable, reflective cholesteric liquid crystals, and the commercial applications of  pressure-sensitive liquid crystal displays, including switchable windows,  eWriters and numerous new products."

Joseph F. Keithley Award For Advances in Measurement Science (2017)
Peter Denes, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, "for his pioneering advances in detectors for electron and X-ray microscopy, especially the development of complementary metal oxide semiconductor detectors for electron microscopy, and column parallel readout charge coupled devices for ptychographic X-ray microscope."

Irving Langmuir Prize in Chemical Physics (2017)
Emily A. Carter, Princeton University, "for the development of rigorous, ab initio methods such as embedding techniques and orbital free density functional theory, and their application to modeling the electronic structure of large systems, including solid materials, and charge transfer phenomena between molecules and surfaces."

Distinguished Lectureship Award on the Applications of Physics (2017)
Rudolf M. Tromp, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, "for extensive and significant contributions to the field of surface physics."

Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize (2017)
Martin J. Rees, University of Cambridge, "for very many contributions to our understanding of the universe and its high-energy contents, including quasars, pulsars, and black holes; and for broadly sharing knowledge of  these in media presentations, lectures, and technical and informal writing."

James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials (2017)
Paul C. Canfield, Iowa State University, "for development and use of solution growth of single crystalline intermetallic materials to design, discover, and elucidate new heavy fermion, superconducting, magnetic, and quasicrystalline states."

Maria Goeppert Mayer Award (2017)
Maiken Mikkelsen, Duke University, "for the demonstration of outstanding potential in the field of quantum nanophotonics."

Dwight Nicholson Medal for Outreach (2017)
John M. Dudley, FEMTO-ST Institute, and Joseph J. Niemela, International Center for Theoretical Physics, "for outstanding leadership of the International Year of Light (2015) and for optical science and engineering outreach on a global scale."

Lars Onsager Prize (2017)
Natan Andrei, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and Paul B. Wiegmann, The University of Chicago,    "for the pioneering discovery of the exact solution of the Kondo and Anderson models, opening a new field of exact treatments of quantum impurity systems."

Abraham Pais Prize for History of Physics (2017)
Mary Jo Nye, Oregon State University, "for path-breaking contributions to the history of physics, as well as for generous service to the profession."

George E. Pake Prize (2017)
Tze-Chiang Chen, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, "for expert leadership in semiconductor technology development and deployment, as well as basic science stewardship."

W.K.H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics (2017)
Michel Della Negra, CERN, Peter Jenni, CERN and Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, and Tejinder Virdee, Imperial College London, "for distinguished leadership in the conception, design, and construction of the ATLAS and CMS detectors, which were instrumental in the discovery of the Higgs boson."

Francis M. Pipkin Award (2017)
Jens Dilling, TRIUMF, "for technical contributions and the use of Penning traps for the precise measurement of short-lived, radioactive nuclei such as halo nuclei and highly charged ions."

Earle K. Plyler Prize for Molecular Spectroscopy & Dynamics (2017)
Albert Stolow, University of Ottawa and National Research Council, "for the development of methods for probing and controlling ultrafast dynamics in polyatomic molecules, including time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy and imaging, strong field molecular ionization, and dynamic Stark quantum control."

Polymer Physics Prize (2017)
Monica Olvera de la Cruz, Northwestern University, "for outstanding contributions to the theoretical understanding of polymers, and the effects of electrostatic interactions on their structure and properties."

Henry Primakoff Award for Early-Career Particle Physics (2017)
Tracy R. Slatyer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "for innovative theoretical calculations and data analyses of the multi-wavelength sky to probe the nature of dark matter."

Rolf Landauer and Charles H. Bennett Award in Quantum Computing (2017)
Andrea Morello, University of New South Wales, "for remarkable achievements in the experimental development of spin qubits in silicon."

I.I. Rabi Prize in Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (2017)
Martin Zwierlein, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "for seminal studies of ultracold Fermi gases, including precision measurements of the equation of state, the observation of superfluidity, solitons, vortices, and polarons, the realization of a microscope for fermions in a lattice; and the production of chemically stable polar molecules."

Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics (2017)
Sauro Succi, Istituto Applicazioni Calcolo "Mauro Picone", C.N.R., "for groundbreaking contributions to the development and application of the lattice Boltzmann method."

Jonathan F. Reichert and Barbara Wolff-Reichert Award for Excellence in Advanced Laboratory Instruction (2017)
Richard Peterson, Bethel University, "for championing a close connection between an enriching advanced laboratory program and quality undergraduate research, taking formative roles in organizations such as the Advanced Laboratory Physics Association and American Association of Physics Teachers."

J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics (2017)
Sally Dawson, Brookhaven National Laboratory, John F. Gunion University of California, Davis, Howard E. Haber, University of California, Santa Cruz, and Gordon L. Kane, University of Michigan, "for instrumental contributions to the theory of the properties, reactions, and signatures of the Higgs boson."

Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science (2017)
Louis F. DiMauro, The Ohio State University, "for groundbreaking work in several areas of high field and ultrafast optical science, from high harmonic generation and free electron lasers to attosecond science."

Leo Szilard Lectureship Award (2017)
James Timbie, U.S. Department of State, "for demonstrating resolve, creativity, and skill in advising national security leadership on nuclear arms control and nonproliferation agreements."

Prize for a Faculty Member for Research in an Undergraduate Institution (2017)
Protik K. Majumder, Williams College, "for contributions to the precision measurement of atomic properties, and sustained, inspirational mentorship of undergraduate researchers."

George E. Valley, Jr. Prize (2016)
Kate A. Ross, Colorado State University, "for the elucidation of quantum frustrated magnetism and its expression in the ground state selection of pyrochlore magnets."

John Wheatley Award (2017)
Neil G. Turok, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, "for visionary efforts to provide science and math training to young Africans, to help promote technological and socio-economic development on that continent."

Robert R. Wilson Prize for Achievement in the Physics of Particle Accelerators (2017)
James Bjorken, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center Laboratory, Sekazi Mtingwa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Anton Piwinski, DESY, "for the detailed, theoretical description of intrabeam scattering, which has empowered major discoveries in a broad range of disciplines by a wide variety of accelerators, including hadron colliders, damping rings/linear colliders, and low emittance synchrotron light sources."

Contact: James Riordon, APS, riordon@aps.org, (301) 209-3238

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