The 2010 Grote Reber Gold Medal for outstanding and innovative contributions to radio astronomy has been awarded to Dr. Alan Rogers, who is a Research Affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Haystack Observatory. Rogers is being honored for his many pioneering developments in radio and radar interferometry, radio spectroscopy, and for his application of radio astronomy techniques to society.
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has chosen James E. Cloern, a senior research scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey for the last 34 years, as the recipient of the 2010 Bostwick H. Ketchum Award.
WASHINGTON—The National Academy of Sciences today announced the election of 72 new members and 18 foreign associates from 14 countries in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
IOP Publishing today announced the appointment of Steven Hall as the company's new Managing Director.
Dr Robert Kirby-Harris, Chief Executive of the Institute of Physics, said: "Steven's track record in publishing, and STM in particular, is extensive and impressive. Having started out at Macmillan Press, Steven went on to Chadwyck-Healey as Sales and Marketing Director and then Managing Director. Following ProQuest's acquisition of Chadwyck-Healey, he was appointed Senior Vice-President, Publishing and Publisher Relations of ProQuest. He moved on in 2004 to become Journal Sales and Marketing Director for Blackwell Publishing and later Commercial Director for Wiley-Blackwell. Steven then used his considerable breadth of strategic experience to form and run his own scholarly publishing consultancy from 2008 onwards.
CAMBRIDGE, MA - The following physicists are among the two hundred and twenty-nine leaders in the sciences, the humanities and the arts, business, public affairs, and the nonprofit sector who have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
· Michael Dine, University of California, Santa Cruz
· Nigel D. Goldenfeld, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
· David Alan Huse, Princeton University
· Andrea J. Liu, University of Pennsylvania
· Richard A. Muller, University of California, Berkeley
· Thomas F. Rosenbaum, University of Chicago
· David A. Weitz, Harvard University
· John W. Wilkins, Ohio State University
· Haim Harari, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
College Park, Maryland, April 21, 2010--Robert Scherrer, Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Vanderbilt University, is the 2010 recipient of the Klopsteg Memorial Award from the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT). Klopsteg awardees are chosen for their extraordinary accomplishments in communicating the excitement of physics to the general public. The Klopsteg awardee presents a lecture on a physics topic of current significance suitable for non-specialists, in memory of Paul Klopsteg, AAPT Past President. Dr. Scherrer will receive the award at the 2010 AAPT Summer Meeting in Portland, OR.
Regarding his selection as this year's recipient, Scherrer said, "I am deeply honored to receive the 2010 Klopsteg Award. I have always enjoyed teaching physics, and in conveying science to the general public, and I hope to present a lecture that is both informative and entertaining."
Scherrer, a well-known cosmologist, has worked in this field since the 1980s and has made major contributions in the study of element production in the early universe, particle physics in the early universe, the clustering of galaxies, and dark energy. Scherrer has published widely in this field. His work has also been mentioned, over the years, in Physics Today, Nature, Science, Science News, Sky & Telescope, and Discover.
In addition to his research, Scherrer is an accomplished teacher and an outstanding speaker. He received the 1999 Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching at Ohio State University, Ohio State's top teaching award. He is also the author of a well-respected quantum mechanics textbook, Quantum Mechanics, an Accessible Introduction (Pearson, 2006).
However, the basis on which Scherrer has been selected as the Klopsteg winner is his work as a published science fiction author. He has written several short stories, mostly published in Analog Magazine. On the basis of this work, he has developed a talk on "Science and Science Fiction." His talk focuses on the way in which new ideas are introduced in physics, and compares this to the way they are developed in the process of writing a science fiction story. He also discusses the predictive nature of science fiction (vs. science), and the way that information is presented in a short story as opposed to a scientific paper.
AAPT is the leading organization for physics teachers and physics education and provides services that help enhance teaching skills and publishes scholarly journals documenting best teaching practices. APPT is committed to providing the most current resources and up-to-date research needed to enhance a physics educator's professional development. The results are not only a deeper appreciation of the teaching profession, but most importantly, more enthusiastic involvement from their students.
About the Award
Established in 1990, this award is given to a notable physicist in memory of Paul Klopsteg. The Klopsteg Memorial Award recipient is asked to make a major presentation at an AAPT Summer Meeting on a topic of current significance suitable for non-specialists.
Previous Awardees
2009 Lee Smolin, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, ON, Canada
2008 Michio Kaku, City University of New York, New York, NY
2007 Neil deGrasse Tyson, Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY
2006 Lisa Randall, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
2005 Wendy Freedman, Carnegie Observatories, Pasadena, CA
2004 Anton Zeilinger, University of Vienna, Austria
http://www.aapt.org/Programs/awards/klopsteg.cfm
About AAPT
AAPT is an international organization for physics educators, physicists, and industrial scientists--with more than 10,000 members worldwide. Dedicated to enhancing the understanding and appreciation of physics through teaching, AAPT provides awards, publications, and programs that encourage teaching practical application of physics principles, support continuing professional development, and reward excellence in physics education. AAPT was founded in 1930 and is headquartered in the American Center for Physics in College Park, Maryland. For more information: Contact Marilyn Gardner, Director of Communications, mgardner@aapt.org, (301) 209-3306, (301) 209-0845 (Fax), www.aapt.org.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
College Park, Maryland, United States, April 26, 2010--The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) announced today that Dr. Patricia M. Heller is the 2010 recipient of the Robert A. Millikan Medal. This award recognizes educators who have made notable and creative contributions to the teaching of physics. It will be presented during the AAPT Summer Meeting at the University of Portland, Oregon.
Heller is Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Minnesota and a founding member of the Physics Education Research (PER) Group. She has been at the forefront of PER for most of her career, taking on problems and issues that later bloom into entire research areas. One example of this is her work with instructor beliefs. She recognized that no instructional change will happen unless the individual instructor believes in the value of the change. This means we need to know what instructors believe and how those beliefs can change. Her initial work on instructor beliefs in the late 1990s has led to other researchers taking on this important area of study. Her work on cooperative group problem solving has also been of great importance and has not only established a firm research base on the topic in university level physics education, but she and her research group have created (and freely disseminated) materials that are widely used and have influenced many instructors to bring more group problem solving into their classrooms.
Heller has a B.S. and M.S. in Physics from the University of Washington and earned her Ph.D. in Science Education at the University of Michigan. She has a long and distinguished career in physics education research and her research program has produced a number of students who are now leaders in the physics education and physics education research communities. The work of Heller, her students, and collaborators has been seminal in the community of researchers and is one of the most effective research-based approaches to teaching introductory physics that has been developed. The University of Minnesota Physics Education Research and Development web site developed by her research group in physics education is a primary resource for physics teachers and contains first rate materials that have been highly influential for many physics instructors, both in college and high school. [http://groups.physics.umn.edu/physed/]
She was a leader on two large NSF-funded projects since 1995: The Constructing Physics Understanding (CPU) project and the Interactions in Physical Science project. The former (1995-2000) developed workshop materials for elementary teachers (to learn physics themselves) and curriculum modules for high school teachers to use in their classrooms. The latter project (1998-2007) developed student and teacher materials for a yearlong middle school physical science course.
Heller's direct contributions to physics education are no less impressive. She has tirelessly worked to improve physics education at all levels. From a background that includes K-12 and university teaching, she took her experiences and her understanding of the education system to create curricula for elementary-school teachers, middle school students, college students, teaching assistants, and even college professors. She knows that change is slow and must come in steps, and has pushed the system to step slowly but surely towards improvement. She has also helped with K-12 reform by being a part of the group that created the science teaching licensure standards for Minnesota's Board of Teaching. In addition, Heller was a consultant to the American Association for the Advancement of Science national science standards, Benchmarks for Science Literacy (1985-1995), and a committee member for the College Board Science standards for College Success™ (2007-2008).
About the Award
The Robert A Millikan Medal, established in 1962, recognizes teachers who have made notable and creative contributions to the teaching of physics. The recipient is asked to make a presentation at the Ceremonial Session of an AAPT Summer Meeting. A monetary award, The Millikan Medal, an Award Certificate, and travel expenses to the meeting are presented to the recipient.
Previous Awardees
2009, Arthur Eisenkraft, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA
2008, Eric Mazur, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
2007, David R. Sokoloff, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
2006, Art Hobson, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
2005, John S. Rigden, Washington University in St. Louis, MO
2004, Kenneth S. Krane, Oregon State University, Corvallis
http://www.aapt.org/Programs/awards/millikan.cfm
About AAPT
AAPT is an international organization for physics educators, physicists, and industrial scientists--with more than 10,000 members worldwide. Dedicated to enhancing the understanding and appreciation of physics through teaching, AAPT provides awards, publications, and programs that encourage teaching practical application of physics principles, support continuing professional development, and reward excellence in physics education. AAPT was founded in 1930 and is headquartered in the American Center for Physics in College Park, Maryland.
For more information: Contact Marilyn Gardner, Director of Communications, mgardner@aapt.org, (301) 209-3306, (301) 209-0845 (Fax), www.aapt.org.
The Planetary Society recently presented Stephen Hawking with the Cosmos Award for Outstanding Public Presentation of Science.
LIVERMORE, Calif—You could say that Lisa Poyneer is working to help astronomers see the stars 100 times better than ever before.
Her work in adaptive optics and the development of the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), which will be the world's most powerful astronomical adaptive optics instrument, has earned her induction into the Alameda County Women's Hall of Fame in the science category.
Ferenc Mezei is the originator of the ESS design concept, the long pulse spallation source. With long neutron pulses, more neutrons can be generated, thus providing significantly better quality scientific results and more scientific applications. Long pulses are also better suited for life sciences and soft matter than short pulses, making the ESS particularly useful for biology, pharmaceutical and medicine.
The Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) announced today that it is presenting the 2010 Robert J. Trumpler Award to Robert Quimby. The Society presents this award each year to a recent recipient of the PhD degree in North America whose research is considered unusually important to astronomy. Quimby completed his PhD in astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin in December 2006. He is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology.
