Ottawa Citizen: After a quarter century of courtroom battles, Chander Grover, a physicist and former manager of the National Research Council of Canada, has agreed to abandon his last remaining lawsuit against the NRC. Born in India, Grover first complained of unfair discrimination at the NRC in 1987. In 1992 he won a landmark human rights case against the council, whose managers were shown to have "thwarted his advancement, humiliated him, unfairly fired him, then tried to intimidate witnesses from testifying on his behalf," writes Andrew Duffy for the Ottawa Citizen. Grover then proceeded to file four more human rights complaints against the NRC and was dismissed in July 2007 for "medical incapacity." Last year Grover underwent cancer treatments. "It's impossible at my age to continue and with all of the health problems I'm facing and my wife is facing," he said. "It's important, but what can I do?" He now plans to write a book about his experience.
Recently in Biography and personalities Category
BBC: Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking was too ill to attend the 8 January symposium at Cambridge University that was held in honor of his 70th birthday. However, he was able to address the audience via a recorded speech. Unable to speak because he suffers from motor neurone disease, Hawking uses twitches of his cheek muscles to choose letters or words on his computer that can be voiced using a speech synthesizer. He is able to select about one word per minute, making the task of writing speeches arduous. Currently the director of research at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge, Hawking also founded the university's Center for Theoretical Cosmology and is a visiting professor at the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada. Saul Perlmutter, one of this year's winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics, and Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal, also spoke at the symposium.
Science: After several years of working in university labs, a PhD chemist switched to teaching science and math to secondary school students. Jeff Cruzan earned his doctorate in physical chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and did his postdoc at Harvard Medical School. When he realized how much he enjoyed explaining things to people, however, he decided to change directions and pursue a career as a teacher. Cruzan got a job teaching science in a Massachusetts high school through a program that does not require a traditional teaching degree, which can take as long as two years of full-time study. Because of the current need for secondary school science and math teachers, a number of people in those fields have been pursuing that “alternative path” to a second, and rewarding, career in teaching, writes Beryl Lieff Benderly for Science.
Science: The work of Hermann Muller, who won the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and Curt Stern, with whom Muller collaborated over a period of years on several key studies, laid the foundation for present-day radiation safety regulations. Current understanding of radiation exposure risk is based on the linear no-threshold model, in which the effect of radiation is proportional to the dose, even at very low levels of exposure. In two recent papers, Edward Calabrese, a toxicologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, alleges that Muller and Stern downplayed evidence that low levels of radiation might be harmless and that Muller was being misleading in his Nobel acceptance speech when he stated that there is no safe level of radiation exposure. Critics have pointed out the possibility that Calabrese's own view may not be objective; some of his research—about 20%, according to Calabrese—is funded by chemical and nuclear industries. Calabrese has responded by saying that he is transparent about his sponsors and that he does not consult for them.
Science: Physicist Jan Hendrik Schön had his PhD revoked by Germany's University of Konstanz because of the 2002 scandal in which he was found to have faked data in at least 17 research papers. Although an investigation turned up no evidence that Schön had committed misconduct while working on his PhD, university officials asked Schön to return his doctoral certificate based on a state law that allows degrees to be revoked when the recipient proves "unworthy." Schön successfully sued the university, and the university appealed. Last week the Administrative Court of Baden-Württemberg in Mannheim ruled in favor of the university. According to the judge, a doctorate degree indicates the recipient is capable of independent scientific research and understands the principles of good scientific practice. When a recipient has violated those basic principles, the title is no longer applicable.
Indian Country Today Media Network: Possibly the only Native American astronomer in the contiguous US, Dennis Lamenti is working to recruit more Native American students into the field. Lamenti was a late comer to astronomy—he was almost 45 years old when he enrolled at San Francisco State University to pursue a bachelor’s degree in physics and later gravitated toward astronomy. Now 53, he has about two years to go on his PhD at Indiana University. Hopeful of inspiring others, Lamenti is considering a career in teaching, particularly returning home to the Navajo Nation in Arizona. He believes indigenous thought is needed for a holistic approach to science and understanding the universe, writes Michelle Tirado for Indian Country Today Media Network.
MarketWatch: Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has been generating worldwide headlines since last week as he’s taken the lead in briefing US lawmakers and the public about the situation in Japan, writes Maggie McNeil for MarketWatch. The 40-year-old physicist has a background in both science and politics, having started his political career as a congressional science fellow on Capitol Hill while in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He became head of the NRC in 2009, after being picked by President Obama and having served as one of the agency’s five commissioners. The NRC was created in 1974 and is responsible for regulating the commercial nuclear power industry and other commercial uses of nuclear material in the US.
BBC: The private archive of Fred Hoyle has been released to the public for the first time. Hoyle was an English astronomer and mathematician who is best remembered as a popularizer of science and as the man who coined the term "Big Bang." His papers, letters, and personal belongings are kept at St. John's College, Cambridge, UK. The collection, which took three years to catalog, is now available online.
Science: Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, who recently became a central figure in the antigovernment protests in Cairo, has stood—sometimes controversially—at the fulcrum of recent global struggles to prevent deadly use of nuclear fission. Science's Dan Charles provides a profile of the man some have called the "anti-Mubarak."
Nature: After years of struggle on behalf of ocean science, Wang Pinxian—a marine geologist at Tongji University in Shanghai—is taking a key role in China's plans to expand marine research. With China facing an increasing need for energy and minerals, it is now taking an interest in the deep sea. In its next five-year budget, which will be announced in March, the country will boost funding for oceanography, particularly in exploration, research, and deep-sea technologies. As a result, Wang was awarded a US$22 million grant from China's National Natural Science Foundation to lead studies into the geology and biology of the South China Sea.
latimes.com: Werner J. A. Dahm, 52, is the chief scientist for the US Air Force, and his job is to separate promising ideas from the stuff of Star Trek.
He advises generals in an era of tightening research and development budgets which scientific innovations are worth pursuing—or not.
Weapons systems take decades to develop and accrue powerful advocates along the way. Dahm's mission is to judge the technology early on and independent of any advocates. Sometimes it means disappointing those in charge.
The LA Times takes a look at a day in the life of the US Air Force's chief scientist.
Discover magazine: Columbia University physicist Brian Greene has become the public face of string theory.
He has provided insight into the topology of those additional dimensions, and in 1999 he introduced the theory to nonscientists in a best-selling book, The Elegant Universe.
In 2008 he cofounded the World Science Festival, an annual event that brings together scientists, artists, and ordinary people who are simply interested in the great questions of the universe.
Greene talked to Discover about how string theory has evolved, the attempts to find supporting evidence through new experiments, and the challenges of making science exciting to the general public.
NYTimes.com: He is good-natured, funny, and thought to be among the smartest men in physics: Frank A. Wilczek, 58, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was one of three winners of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics and is a frequent columnist for Physics Today.
The award came for work Wilczek had done in his 20s, with David Gross of Princeton University, on quantum chromodynamics, a theoretical advance that is part of the foundation of modern physics.
The New York Times provides an edited version of two conversations with Wilczek, in October and this month.
New Scientist: Stephen Wolfram reckons he can model the entire universe using tiny computer programs. But despite being the creator of a "search engine" that provides answers, he still has to convince his peers that he's on the right track, as David Cohen discovers.
The Guardian: Walk round the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park and sooner or later you'll hear a cry of recognition and someone will say: "I remember using one of those."
It probably doesn't happen often to The Millionaire, a mechanical calculator that went into production in 1893, but Sir Maurice Wilkes spotted it, adding: "We used to have one in the lab. I hope it's still there."
In this case, "the lab" was what became the Cambridge University Computer Lab, which Wilkes headed from 1945 until 1980.
It was where he built Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (Edsac), one of the world's first electronic computers, using sound beams traversing baths of mercury for the memory units.
Scripps Oceanography News: George G. Shor Jr, professor emeritus of geophysics at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, died 3 July at his home in La Jolla, California, from complications following several strokes. He was 86 years old.
Shor's distinguished career included helping develop the nation's consortium of research ships operated by oceanographic institutions and participating in the creation of the California Sea Grant program.
Shor was born 8 June 1923, in New York City. He received his BS degree in mechanical engineering from California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1944. He joined the Naval Reserve and served in World War II as an electronics officer and communications officer, with duty in the Pacific theater on a ship that transported troops. After the war, he remained in the Naval Reserve until his retirement as commander in 1983.
In the fall of 1946 he returned to Caltech for graduate work in geophysics and received an MS degree in 1948. He then worked for Seismic Explorations, Inc. (SEI), based in Houston, which had a number of crews prospecting for oil. He worked in New Mexico and west Texas, and by 1949 he led the operations of one of the company's crews.
In 1951 Shor returned to Caltech for his Ph.D. in seismology and geology. His adviser was the noted earthquake expert Charles Richter. Shor received his PhD in 1954, with a dissertation on recording blasts to reach the Mohorovicic discontinuity, the boundary layer between Earth's crust and mantle, the depth of which varies from about 3 miles beneath the ocean floor to about 25 miles beneath the continents.
In 1953 Shor began work at Scripps Institution of Oceanography as an assistant research geophysicist at the Marine Physical Laboratory, and he continued with that unit until his retirement in 1991. During his decades at Scripps, he advised many graduate students.
Shor planned and served as chief scientist on many research expeditions at sea, where he carried out studies of the structure beneath the sea floor, using refraction and reflection techniques, from explosives to air guns. His early work was in the Gulf of Alaska, a region then little known for its geologic history.
In 1960 he led the first leg of the first expedition by Scripps into the Indian Ocean, part of the International Indian Ocean Expeditions. His research continued in that region, and he became a special adviser to the Committee for Coordination of Joint Prospecting for Mineral Resources in Asian Offshore Areas (CCOP) from 1976 to 1991.
Project Mohole was established in the mid-1950s an attempt to retrieve a sample of material from Earth's mantle by drilling a hole through the Earth's crust to the Mohorovicic discontinuity, or Moho. If successful, this highly ambitious exploration of the intraterrestrial frontier would provide invaluable information on Earth's age, makeup, and internal processes. In addition, evidence drawn from the Moho could be brought to bear on the question of continental drift, which at the time was still controversial. Shor served on some of the Mohole Project's committees and scheduled several expeditions to determine geologic structure. He and his colleague Russell W. Raitt identified the best location to drill the hole, off Hawaii. The project was ended by Congress before drilling could begin.
In the 1960s Shor helped to establish the California Sea Grant program, headquartered at Scripps and involving a number of California universities. He served as its manager from 1969 to 1973. The organization founded a great many studies on marine subjects within the state.
Shor was chairman of two divisions at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. From 1968 until his 1991 retirement he served as an associate director of the institution, primarily for seagoing operations and management of the institution's fleet of research ships. He participated in the establishment of the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS), which coordinates operations of the research ships operated by oceanographic institutions.
Shor was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the American Miscellaneous Society, the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, the Seismological Society and Sigma Xi.
He is survived by his wife of 59 years, Scripps historian Elizabeth (Betty) Noble Shor, and three children.
The family suggests donations in his memory be made to Scripps Institution of Oceanography for its valuable oceanographic research collections or to Friends of the International Center at UC San Diego for scholarships.
Physics Today: Herbert Frank York (24 November 1921-19 May 2009), an eminent nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, provided decades of advice to government on science and arms control issues, and founding chancellor of the University of California, San Diego (1961-1964) died on Tuesday at Thornton Hospital in San Diego after a long illness. He was 87. 
UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox said, "Herb was not only a leader of UC San Diego, he also was a world leader and had a global impact. During his exceptional, long-standing career, he was the 'first' in many of the positions he held. Herb York made this campus and this world a better place. We will forever be grateful for his leadership and vision."
Harold Brown, Secretary of Defense under President Carter and one of York's closest friends, said, "Herb York's life was an unsurpassed record of achievement in science, education and national security. He played the leading role in creating a series of innovative and crucial institutions--a nuclear laboratory, the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency, a UC campus, the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. In the national government, in California, and in international meetings and negotiations, he was dedicated to peace while being realistic about security needs. Beyond the public record, all of us who knew him as a friend appreciated his omnivorous interest in the world around him, dedication to his family, great sense of humor and zest for life; for us, the loss is both intensified and redeemed by our recognition of the model he provided."
"Herb and I have been friends since 1948 and our lives have been intertwined ever since," said Marvin Goldberger, former dean of UC San Diego's Division of Natural Sciences and former president of Caltech. "By the time Herb was only 28 years old, he had been appointed director of the Livermore Laboratory. That was the start of Herb's career of public service at the highest levels of government and academe. He was an effective voice for science within the White House and enormously effective as the first chancellor of UC San Diego."
Mark Thiemens, dean of UC San Diego's Division of Physical Sciences, noted "Herb is one of the most remarkable and influential scientists I have ever met. Whenever I pick up a book on the history of science policy in the United States, a history of the Manhattan Project, or a history of fundamental physics, Herb is featured prominently. He played an integral role in creating our nation's science agencies--the NSF, NASA and the Department of Energy--as well as an integral role in developing UC San Diego into a world renowned university."
Speaking for the family, York's oldest daughter, Rachel, said, "We are so grateful that Dad died in the embrace of the university he loved so very much, and was so very proud of."
UC's long association with York
York first came to the UC system in 1943 when he was recruited to join the staff of the University of California Radiation Laboratory (UCRL) at Berkeley. Under the auspices of the UCRL, York was dispatched to work on the top-secret Manhattan Project, where a group of scientists designed the first atomic bomb - the bomb detonated over Hiroshima, Japan.
In a memoir, York wrote that his contribution to the bomb's development had not been all that profound, but that he still felt triumphant: "Not only did we complete the project, but we ended the war."
Ending the war, or better yet, not starting one, was eventually to become a cause York advocated the better part of his life.
York received his B.S. and M.S. degrees, both in the same year, at the University of Rochester. At the end of World War II, York returned to UC Berkeley as a graduate student, received a doctorate in physics in 1949, stayed on as research physicist, then joined the physics department in 1951 as an assistant professor. Life in academia was short-lived, as once again he was recruited to a more urgent mission. From July 1952, to March 1958, York initiated and directed the UC Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, overseeing research programs which included development of the hydrogen bomb and other classified programs under the sponsorship of the Atomic Energy Commission.
In March of 1958, York became the first chief scientist of the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon, Washington, DC In December of that year, President Eisenhower appointed him the first director of Defense Research and Engineering, serving as civilian supervisor of missile and space research.
It was during these duties in the 1950s that York's belief that ending a war was done most effectively by not starting one sharpened, and turned him emphatically to arms control and to a nuclear test ban as a first step. "I was the only senior official who thought it (arms control and nuclear test ban) was a great idea," York later said. "Others were tolerant of it, but the majority thought it was really dumb."
York returned to academia in 1961 when UC established a campus in La Jolla. UC President Clark Kerr turned to York as someone with a solid record of administration and good rapport with the Board of Regents. York was named chancellor 17 February 1961, and assumed office in July that year.
In his slightly more than three years as UCSD chancellor, York worked with faculty committees planning to expand the campus. Though pleased with the tangible progress, York was less than gratified by the bureaucratic system of committee-based decision making and resigned in November of 1964 to return to teaching as a professor of physics, later chairing the Physics Department and serving as dean of graduate studies, 1969-1970.
An interest in arms control
York also was continuing in various capacities for the US government. He served as a member of the first General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament, 1962-69; headed the US delegation to a UNESCO conference in 1965 on the application of science and technology; served as a member of the US delegation to Soviet-American Arms Control Talks, 1978-79, and served as US ambassador and chief negotiator for the Comprehensive Test Ban negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland, 1979-81.
Opposition in both the United States and the Soviet Union scuttled the Geneva negotiations, and York later related his disappointment, but not surprise, saying that at that time: "The world situation just wouldn't support it."
In 1969, York started a long association with Pugwash Conferences on Science & World Affairs, by attending his first private meeting with Soviet counterparts to discuss arms control issues. "It is truly no understatement to say that Herb was one of the giants of the American national security and arms control communities," says Pugwash Executive Diretor Jeffrey Boutwell, "and few people embodied as he did the highest standards of intellectual rigor and passionate engagement for seeking what was best for our country and the world community."
Sandy Butcher, the official Pugwash historian, agrees by pointing to a 1971 quote from York, "[O]ur final goal must remain the ideal of general and complete disarmament.... Any reasonable extrapolation of history tells us that if we keep all those weapons around they will be used. While no one can say how to get from the present situation all the way to total nuclear disarmament, it is clear that throwing weapons away heads us in the right direction and building more weapons, be they MIRVs, ABMs, or SS-9s, heads us in the wrong direction. We have fussed too much and too long about fine structure. We must begin to focus on directions rather than details." (A Little Arms Control Can be a Dangerous Thing, War/Peace Report, August/September 1971, pp. 3 - 7).
Presidential Adviser
York also was adviser to six US presidents on arms and armament, and served on the President's Science Advisory Committee and the scientific advisory boards of the Army and the Air Force.
The scholar and university administrator again served as chancellor of UC San Diego on an interim basis from 1970 to 1972. In contrast to his first term as founding chancellor, before the first students had even been accepted, York relished the short interim chancellorship made sweeter by the fact that "we had real students, and it was a real university."
Following the second chancellorship, York taught physics and served as director of the Program in Science, Technology and Public Affairs, 1973-88. In 1983 York founded and directed the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC), which conducts research and seminars on conflict resolution and promotes international efforts to avoid war. In 1989 he became director emeritus.
He also served as advisor to the president of UC and the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories on the future of the nuclear labs.
Richard Atkinson, president emeritus of the University of California and former UC San Diego Chancellor, said, "Herb played a key role in the development of nuclear weapons and more importantly, in defining the nation's policy on such weapons. As the first chancellor of UC San Diego he set the standard for excellence and the university's subsequent development as a great research university. His contributions at the national level and in San Diego are truly legendary."
Among his numerous awards were:
* The 2000 Clark Kerr Award for Distinguished Leadership in higher education, the highest honor bestowed by UC Berkeley's Academic Senate.
* The 2000 Enrico Fermi Award for his efforts and contributions in nuclear deterrence and arms control agreements, presented by President Clinton in Washington DC The Fermi Award is the government's oldest science and technology award honoring lifetime achievement.
* The 2000 Vannevar Bush Award for leadership in the arms control movement and work in nuclear energy, presented by the National Science Board, the policymaking arm of the National Science Foundation.
* Also, the American Physical Society's Leo Szilard Award, 1994; the Federation of American Scientists' Public Service Award, 1993, and the Atomic Energy Commission's Ernest O. Lawrence Memorial Award, 1962.
York was the author of six books: Arms Control (Readings from Scientific American, 1973); The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller and Superbomb (1976); Race to Oblivion: A Participant's View of the Arms Race (1978); Making Weapons, Talking Peace: A Physicist's Journey from Hiroshima to Geneva (1987); A Shield in Space? Technology, Politics and the Strategic Defense Initiative (1988); and Arms and the Physicist (1994).
He is survived by his wife of 61 years, Sybil, whom he met at Berkeley, and three children: Rachel York, Dr. Cynthia York, David Winters, and four grandchildren.
Arrangements for a memorial service at UC San Diego are pending.
In lieu of flowers, the York family suggests donations in Herb's memory be made to the "Herb York Memorial Fund. "Donations can be made online at www.givetoucsd.ucsd.edu by indicating in the comment section Herb York Memorial Fund.
Related Links
Herbert York dies at 87; scientist and arms-control leader LA Times
Herbert York, 87, Top Nuclear Physicist Who Was Arms Control Advocate, Dies New York Times
To say that he was excited would be an understatement. As an astronaut, Dr. Grunsfeld had twice journeyed to space to make repairs on humanity’s most vaunted eye on the cosmos, experiences he had described to a high-level panel pondering Hubble’s fate only a few months before as the most meaningful in his life. He was looking forward to leading the third and final servicing mission, which had been delayed by the loss of the shuttle Columbia and its crew the year before.
Thinking that the mission was now being scheduled, Dr. Grunsfeld raced to Washington, only to learn that Sean O’Keefe, NASA’s administrator, had canceled it on the ground that it was too risky. Wearing his other hat as NASA’s chief scientist, Dr. Grunsfeld now had the job of telling the world that the space agency was basically abandoning its greatest scientific instrument at the same time that it was laying plans for the even riskier and more expensive effort to return humans to the Moon.
He said he felt as if he had been hit by a two-by-four.
“Being an astronaut, there are not a lot of things that have really shocked me in my life,” Dr. Grunsfeld said in a recent interview. But, he added, “I don’t think anybody could ever prepare themselves for, you know, trying to bury something that they have said, ‘Hey, this is worth risking my life for.’ ”
He went home that January night and wondered whether he should resign.
On May 12, he and six other astronauts commanded by Scott Altman are scheduled to ride to the telescope’s rescue one last time aboard the shuttle Atlantis. This will be the fifth and last time astronauts visit Hubble. When the telescope’s batteries and gyros finally run out of juice sometime in the middle of the next decade, NASA plans to send a rocket and drop it into the ocean.
If all goes well in what Dr. Grunsfeld described as “brain surgery” in space, Hubble will be left at the apex of its scientific capability. As chief Hubble repairman for the past 18 years, he has been intertwined with the Hubble telescope physically, as well as intellectually and emotionally. “He might be the only person on Earth who has observed with Hubble and touched Hubble,” said Bruce Margon, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and former deputy director of the Space Telescope Science Institute.
The New York Times: Martin J. Klein, a historian of modern physics and the editor of a vast collection of papers that documented the years in which Albert Einstein completed his revolutionary work on the general theory of relativity, died Saturday in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 84 and lived in Chapel Hill.
Physics Today: Nobel Prize winner Willis Eugene Lamb Jr died early Thursday, 15 May, at University Medical Center in Tucson, Arizona, of complications arising from a gallstone disorder. He was 94.
Lamb was born in 12 July 1913 in Los Angeles, California. He received a BS in chemistry in 1934 and a PhD in Physics in 19358 from the University of California, Berkeley. His doctoral research on the scattering of neutrons by a crystal was directed by J. Robert Oppenheimer.
He joined the Columbia University physics faculty in 1938. From 1943 to 1951, he worked with the Columbia Radiation Laboratory. There his defense-related research focused on the problem of how to make shorter, higher-frequency microwave sources for radar.
"I was teaching a summer session course on spectroscopy at Columbia in 1945 and remember August 8, the day the bombing of Hiroshima was announced," Lamb recalled in an interview in 2000, when he received the National Medal of Science, the nation's highest scientific honor.
"In teaching this course, I read a book that mentioned that German researchers in the 1930s had thought that hydrogen atoms would respond to three centimeter-wavelength radiation, the same radiation I worked with in the lab," he said.
Because of the war, Lamb had no way to contact the German scientists, who had disappeared. But he knew how to make the necessary radiation, and in the summer of 1946 he conceived a difficult experiment to study the fine structure of optical radiation from hydrogen with very high-resolution radio-frequency resonance methods. He designed and built the apparatus with R. C. Retherford, a Columbia University graduate student.
Lamb explained: "The apparatus I used was a combination of metal and glass. You might say the hydrogen atoms went in one end and came out the other end, and in between you did things with them involving microwaves and a magnetic field. The whole thing sat on a table maybe eight feet long."
In April 1947 &mdash "I remember it was on a Saturday," Lamb said &mdash his experiment succeeded. It revealed the minute but significant shift of energy in the hydrogen atom in different states.
Two months later he was invited to present his work at a historically famous conference on Shelter Island, New York; the conference was subsidized by the National Academy of Sciences to explore directions for research in the post war era.
Prior to Lamb's discovery, physicists knew that some states of the hydrogen atom had well-defined energy levels. The accepted theories predicted that certain distinct states would have precisely the same energies when the atom was activated. But physicists were puzzled when other calculations suggested that those energies might differ by tiny amounts, and the experimental evidence was unclear.
Lamb's discovery of the quantum effect that became known as the "Lamb shift" led physicists to rethink the basic concepts behind the application of quantum theory to electromagnetism. His work, which became one of the foundations of quantum electrodynamics, a key aspect of modern elementary-particle physics, won the 1955 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Lamb is also well known for his theoretical research with lasers, which predicted how the intensity of a laser drops under certain circumstances. The process had been seen experimentally by William Bennett. The effect, which can be used to precisely set laser frequencies, is known as the Lamb-Bennett dip.
Lamb was the Wykeham Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford from 1956 to 1962, and he also taught at Yale, Columbia and Stanford. He joined the University of Arizona in 1974 and retired from full-time research and teaching in 2002.
Lamb wrote a series of papers, published in the Physical Review from 1947-1953 that was regarded as an immediate classic by everyone working in atomic physics, said UA physics professor William H. Wing. Wing said that when he began graduate studies at the University of Michigan in 1962, he was handed that set of Lamb's papers as a starting point for learning modern atomic physics. He did his post-graduate research at Yale, supervised by Lamb. Wing was appointed to the Yale faculty, then joined Lamb when he moved to Arizona in 1974.
Lamb's first wife, Ursula Schaefer Lamb, died in 1996. His marriage to Bruria Kaufman, a physicist he met at Columbia in 1941, ended in divorce.
"His fondest life memories were two — his years at New College, Oxford University, and his summer trips to the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, a gathering of Nobel laureates and talented young students held annually at Lindau, Germany on Lake Constance. We were planning to attend the Lindau meeting this summer," said third wife Elsie Wattson Lamb, who met Lamb 27 years ago and married him earlier this year on 26 January 2008.
In addition to his widow, Lamb is survived by a brother, Perry, who lives in Maine.
Related Links
University of Arizona press release
1955 Nobel Prize in Physics
Biography at Nobel Prize Foundation
Lamb's Nobel Prize Speech
Few figures have contributed more to American public science policy than Golden, whose long career of public service and charity helped shape both government research agencies and nonprofit science institutions. "He was a humanitarian scientist, … his love of science and its importance to humanity led to many gifts to all of us," says John Gibbons, science adviser to President William Clinton, calling Golden's contributions to U.S. science "almost immeasurable."
Los Angeles Times: The efforts of the Swedish scientist now allow for assays of corrosion of metal surfaces, identification of contaminants and many other applications.
The New York Times: Homer J. Stewart, an aerospace engineer and rocket propulsion expert who in 1958 helped launch the first successful American satellite, Explorer 1, while he kept tabs on rival efforts by the Russians, died on May 26 at his home in Altadena, Calif. He was 91.
Earthtimes.org : French winner of the Nobel Prize for physics Pierre- Gilles de Gennes has died at the age of 74, his family said Tuesday in Paris. The scientist and engineer passed away on Friday. He was awarded science's most distinguished prize in 1991 for his work on the behaviour of molecules and molecular chains in liquid crystals.
Photonics.com: Theodore Maiman, PhD, inventor of the first operable laser and twice nominated for a Nobel Prize, died May 5 in Vancouver, British Columbia. His death was confirmed by his wife, Kathleen.
The New York Times: E. Dorrit Hoffleit, an astronomer who studied the features of stars visible to the naked eye, edited a standard reference on them and was probably the oldest working scientist in her field, died on April 9 at her home in New Haven. She was 100.
The New York Times: E. Dorrit Hoffleit, an astronomer who studied the features of stars visible to the naked eye, edited a standard reference on them and was probably the oldest working scientist in her field, died on April 9 at her home in New Haven. She was 100.
The New York Times: Paul J. Cohen, a versatile mathematician whose path-breaking work in the field of logic helped resolve a fundamental question of mathematics and won for him the prestigious Fields Medal, died of a lung disease on March 23 in Stanford, Calif. He was 72.
The New York Times: James Hillier, a physicist and inventor who helped develop an early and commercially successful electron microscope for RCA and then found ways to apply it for medical research, died last Monday in Princeton, N.J. He was 91.
El Defensor Chieftain: Former New Mexico Tech professor of physics and Manhattan project scientist Marvin H. Wilkening, 88, died Sunday at the Good Samaritan Village.
The New York Times: Melvin Schwartz, who shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics for generating a beam of wispy particles known as neutrinos, died Monday at a nursing home in Twin Falls, Idaho. He was 73 and lived in Ketchum, Idaho.
The New York Times: James A. Van Allen, the physicist who made the first major scientific discovery of the early space age, the Earth-circling radiation belts that bear his name, and sent spacecraft instruments to observe the outer reaches of the solar system, died yesterday in Iowa City. He was 91.
United Press International: Renowned physicist James Van Allen, who helped launch the United States into the space age and for whom the Van Allen radiation belts are named, has died. He was 91.
Huffington Post: Yoram Kaufman, a senior atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center was hit by a SUV on Friday May 26th, Dr. Kaufman while riding his bicycle from one side of the Goddard campus to another. He died from his injuries on May 31st, one day short of his 58th birthday.
The New York Times: Raymond Davis Jr., a chemist at Brookhaven National Laboratory who won a Nobel Prize in Physics for capturing evanescent particles known as neutrinos from the sun, died on Wednesday at his home in Blue Point, N.Y. He was 91.
The Washington Post: Theodore A. Litovitz, 82, a Catholic University physics professor and prolific inventor who discovered a way to store nuclear waste more safely, created an electronic chip to shield cellphone users from harmful electromagnetic radiation and developed some of the early fiber optics now used for telecommunications, died of complications of kidney cancer May 1 at Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis.
ScienceNow: Yuval Ne'eman, one of the most colorful figures of modern science, died today at the age of 80. He was best known for the Eightfold Way classification of elementary particles, developed simultaneously with Murray Gell-Mann in the early 1960s, which helped bring order to the confused world of subatomic physics.
