25th Anniversary Commemoration

Photo courtesy of Darlene Logan/APS The dinner guests included (l to r): Alexei Smirnov, one of the recipients of the 2008 Sakurai Prize; Lincoln Wolfenstein, the 1992 Sakurai Prize recipient; Leo Stodolsky (Max-Planck-Institut für Physik, München); Noriko Sakurai, widow of J. J. Sakurai; Harold Ticho (UCSD, emeritus); Marie De Jesus, Chair of the science department at Thomas Jefferson High School in St. Louis, which J. J. Sakurai attended; APS Director of Development Darlene Logan; APS Treasurer/Publisher Joseph Serene; and Daniel Sternheimer (Université de Bourgogne).

On April 12, in conjunction with the April Meeting in St. Louis, APS hosted a dinner to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the J. J. Sakurai Prize, which is awarded for outstanding achievement in theoretical particle physics.

The J. J. Sakurai Prize is named for Jun John Sakurai, who died in 1982 at age 49, at the height of a brilliant career as a researcher, teacher and textbook author. Sakurai was Professor of Physics at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) at the time of his death.