Six Physicists Honored at October, November Unit Meetings

Six physicists are being honored with APS prizes and awards at unit meetings this fall. The 2003 James Clerk Maxwell Prize, Excellence in Plasma Physics Award, and Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award in Plasma Physics were bestowed during the 2003 APS Division of Plasma Physics meeting, held October 27- 31 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

And the 2003 Fluid Dynamics Prize, Otto LaPorte Award, and Andreas Acrivos Dissertation Award will be presented during the upcoming meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics, November 23-25, in Meadowlands, New Jersey.

2003 James Clerk Maxwell Prize

Eugene N. Parker
University of Chicago

Citation: "For seminal contributions in plasma astrophysics, including predicting the solar wind, explaining the solar dynamo, formulating the theory of magnetic reconnection, and the instability which predicts the escape of the magnetic fields from the galaxy."

Parker received a BS in physics from Michigan State University in 1948 and a PhD in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1951. He was an instructor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Utah 1951-1953 and then a research associate with Walter M. Elsasser in the Department of Physics.

Parker moved to the University of Chicago in June 1955. He retired from the University of Chicago in 1995.

Parker was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1967. Parker has received various scientific awards over the years, including the National Medal of Science in 1989, and the 2003 Kyoto Prize in Basic Science.

2003 Excellence in Plasma Physics Research Award

Siegfried Glenzer
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Citation: "For elegant diagnostics using collective Thomson scattering together with x-ray spectrocopy which greatly advanced the understanding of the complex plasma environment in laser driven hohlraums used in inertial confinement fusion."

Glenzer earned his undergraduate degree in 1990 and his PhD in 1994 in plasma physics from the Ruhr-Universitat Bochum in Germany.

He came to the US in 1995 as a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he is currently head of the Plasma Physics Group in the National Ignition Facility program, performing the first experiments on the NIF laser.

His research interests are in the areas of inertial confinement fusion, plasma spectroscopy, and laser plasma interactions. He also first introduced Thompson scattering to characterize hohlraum plasma conditions, and has since used the technique to study atomic kinetics and plasma waves in high temperature and high density plasmas.

2003 Outstanding Doctoral Thesis in Plasma Physics

Alex Arefiev
University of Texas at Austin

Citation: "For first principles theoretical analysis of a plasma thruster that models the helicon plasma source, single-pass radio frequency heating, and particle and momentum balance."

Arefiev received his BS in physics from Novosibirsk State University (Russia) in 1998.

As an undergraduate student, he worked at the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics (Novosibirsk, Russia). His undergraduate research was focused on the physics of single species plasma. In 1999, he enrolled in the graduate program in plasma physics at the University of Texas at Austin.

His graduate work was supported by the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) project (NASA Johnson Space Center), Institute for Fusion Studies, and Fusion Research Center.

Arefiev received his PhD in physics in 2002. He is currently employed by the Institute for Fusion Studies as a postdoctoral fellow. He has also joined the High Intensity Laser Science Group at the University of Texas at Austin, to collaborate on theory involving laser-irradiated micro-clusters. His areas of interest include helicon plasma sources, ion cyclotron heating, and laser-target interaction.

2003 Fluid Dynamics Prize

Jerry Gollub
Haverford College and University of Pennsylvania

Citation: "For his elucidation of chaos, instabilities, mixing and pattern formation in various contexts including fluid convection, and his contributions to our understanding of surface waves, film and granular flows, through his clever experiments, lucid papers and lively lectures."

Gollub received his AB from Oberlin College in 1966, and his PhD in experimental condensed matter physics at Harvard University in 1971. He has been on the faculty of Haverford College since 1970, and is also affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania.

He has undertaken a wide range of experiments on nonlinear and fluid dynamics, including studies of instabilities and pattern formation in fluids, chaotic dynamics and turbulence, nonlinear waves, mixing in fluids, and the dynamics of granular materials. He has coauthored an undergraduate textbook on nonlinear dynamics, and teaches physics courses for a broad audience.

Gollub received the first APS Award for Research in an Undergraduate Institution. He co-chaired a study of advanced high school mathematics and science for the National Research Council, and has served on the APS Executive Board.

2003 Otto LaPorte Award

Norman J. Zabusky
Rutgers University

Citation: "For pioneering and enduring contributions in nonlinear and vortex physics and computational fluid dynamics, including: the soliton; contour dynamics and V-states for 2D flows; vortex projectiles for accelerated inhomogeneous flows; and visiometrics for reduced modeling."

Zabusky received his PhD in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1959. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he spent five years at Bell Laboratories, eventually heading the Computational Physics Research Department, before joining the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh as a professor of mathematics.

In 1988 he moved to Rutgers University as State of New Jersey Professor of Computational Fluid Dynamics.

Zabusky is an advocate of the "visiometric" process which can enhance productivity for scientists and engineers who visualize, diagnose and quantify databases from large-scale simulations. He also gives talks on science and the art of fluid motion for artistic innovation and collaboration, and for science and engineering outreach.

2003 Andreas Acrivos Dissertation Award

Projsenjit Bagchi
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Citation: "For his careful and extensive numerical experiments elucidating the fundamental mechanisms governing the motion of a spherical particle subject to complex unsteady and inhomogenous flows at moderate to high Reynolds number"

Biographical information unavailable at press time.