APS News

November 1996 (Volume 5, Number 10)

Physicists To Be Honored at November Meetings

Five physicists will be honored for their work in fluid dynamics and plasma physics in November. The 1996 James Clerk Maxwell Prize, Excellence in Plasma Physics Award, and the Simon Ramo Award will be presented during the annual fall meeting of the Division of Plasma Physics in Denver, Colorado, November 11-14. The 1996 Fluid Dynamics Prize and Otto Laporte Award will be presented during the annual fall meeting of the Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) in Syracuse, NY, November 24-26.

Prizes

1996 James Clerk Maxwell Prize

Established in 1975 by a donation from Maxwell Laboratories, Inc., the James Clerk Maxwell Prize is intended to recognize outstanding contributions to the field of plasma physics.
Thomas Michael O'Neil
University of California, San Diego

Citation: "For seminal contributions to plasma theory including the effect of trapping on Landau damping, the plasma-wave echo, and the confinement, transport, and thermal equilibria of non-neutral plasmas, liquids and crystals."

O'Neil received his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego, in 1965 and spent the next two years as a member of the research staff at General Atomic. In 1967 he joined the UCSD faculty, where he is currently a professor of physics. His early research focused on nonlinear effects in plasmas and included the extension of Landau damping to the nonlinear regime, as well as the theory of plasma wave echoes. More recently, he has studied the novel physics of magnetically trapped nonneutral plasmas, liquids and crystals. In 1991 he was co-recipient of the APS Excellence in Plasma Physics Award.

1996 Fluid Dynamics Prize

Established in 1979 the Fluid Dynamics Prize is intended to recognize and encourage outstanding achievements in fluid dynamics research. The prize is now supported by friends of the Division of Fluid Dynamics and the AIP Journal, Physics of Fluids.

Parviz Moin
Fermi National Laboratory

Citation: "For his pioneering work of direct numerical simulation and large-eddy simulation of turbulent flows in the study of turbulence physics, modeling and control; for developing novel approaches in turbulence research using a computer-generated database as the primary resource; and for his leadership in the international turbulence research community as the founding director of the Center for Turbulence Research."

Moin received his Ph.D. degree in mathematics and mechanical engineering from Stanford University in 1978. He was a fellow of the National Research Council and a staff scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center before joining the Stanford faculty in 1986. He is the founding director of the Center for Turbulence Research at Stanford and NASA/Ames. Established in 1987 as a research consortium, the center is devoted to fundamental studies of turbulent flows and is widely recognized as an international focal point for turbulence research, attracting diverse groups of researchers from engineering, mathematics and physics.

Moin pioneered the use of direct and large eddy simulation techniques for the study of turbulence physics, control and modeling concepts, and has written widely on the structure of turbulent shear flows. His current interests include interaction of turbulent flows and shock waves, aerodynamic noise and hydro-acoustics, turbulence control, large eddy simulation and parallel computing.

Awards

1996 Excellence in Plasma Physics Research Award

Established in 1981, this award is intended to recognize a particular recent outstanding achievement in plasma physics research.
Christopher E. Clayton
Chandrashekhar Joshi

University of California, Los Angeles

Citation: "For their pioneering experiments in plasma-based accelerator concepts; particularly for their unambiguous experimental demonstration that electrons can be accelerated to relativistic energies by the beating of two laser beams in a plasma with their frequency difference equal to the plasma frequency."

Clayton received his Ph.D. in engineering from UCLA in 1984 and is currently the project manager for UCLA's Neptune Laboratory. He has contributed to the understanding of stimulated Brillouin scattering, collinear optical mixing, and most recently, to the wave breaking of relativistic plasma waves excited by forward Raman scattering.

Joshi received his Ph.D. in applied physics from England's Hull University in 1978 and held a postdoctoral position at the National Research Council in Ottawa, Canada. He is currently a full professor in the E.E. department at UCLA. Joshi has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of extremely nonlinear optical effects in plasmas including; parametric instabilities, resonant self-focusing, frequency upshifting by ionization fronts, and nonlinear coupling between electron-plasma waves.

1996 Simon Ramo Award

Sponsored by TRW, Inc., and the Division of Plasma Physics, the Ramo Award was established in 1985. It is intended to provide recognition to exceptional young scientists who have performed original doctoral thesis work of outstanding scientific quality and achievement in the area of plasma physics.

Michael Alan Beer
Princeton University

Citation: "For fundamental contributions to the development of simulations of gyrofluid equations for studying tokamak plasma turbulence, including a novel fluid model of trapped electrons that led to realistic comparisons with experiments."

Beer received his Ph.D. in 1994 from Princeton University and is currently working at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. His present research focuses on the development of fluid models for plasma turbulence and simulations of turbulent transport in tokamaks and magnetic confinement fusion experiments.

1996 Otto Laporte Award

The Otto LaPorte Award was established in 1985 to honor important advances in fluid dynamics.

Donald Coles
California Institute of Technology

Citation: "For his contributions to fluid dynamics through exquisite experiments on turbulent boundary layers, Taylor-Couette flow, vortex rings, and turbulent wakes, and his insightful analysis of turbulence data. His research and teaching have inspired several generations of students and researchers throughout the world."

Coles received his undergraduate education at the Universities of Michigan and Minnesota. He obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1948 and 1953, respectively. His main research interests and research publications include work on the dynamics of rotating fluids and on the properties of turbulent flow, and he has made notable contributions to the development of advanced experimental techniques and instrumentation. In 1985 he received the Dryden Medal from the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences.

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Editor: Barrett H. Ripin

November 1996 (Volume 5, Number 10)

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Articles in this Issue
New Results Supporting Standard Model Highlight 1996 DPF Meeting
Inside the Beltway
McIlrath to Become New APS Treasurer
Physicists To Be Honored at November Meetings
Aylesworth Observes Politics in Action on the Hill
1997 March Meeting: Large & Small, Old & New
AIP Offers New Web Site for History of Physics and Astronomy
Szilard, Schawlow Inducted into Inventor's Hall of Fame
Schrieffer and Garmire Named to Committee on National Medal of Science
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