APS News

November 1997 (Volume 6, 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 1997 Fluid Dynamics Prize and Otto Laporte Award will be presented during the annual fall meeting of the Division of Fluid Dynamics in San Francisco, California. The 1997 James Clerk Maxwell Prize, Excellence in Plasma Physics Award, and the Outstanding Doctoral Thesis in Plasma Physics Award will be presented during the annual fall meeting of the Division of Plasma Physics in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

1997 FLUID DYNAMICS PRIZE

Established in 1979, the prize is now supported by the American Institute of Physics journal Physics of Fluids and friends of the Division of Fluid Dynamics to recognize and encourage outstanding achievement in fluid dynamics research.

Louis Norberg Howard
Florida State University

Citation: "For fundamental theoretical concepts in the theory of turbulence, stability, rotating and stratified fluid flows, and other fluid dynamical problems, including upper bounding theory of statistically stationary turbulence, semicircle theorems for the stability of geophysical flows, the spin-up problem, and reaction-diffusion and double-diffusion problems."

Howard received his Ph.D. in mathematical physics from Princeton University in 1953. After lecturing there in mathematics and a short tenure at the California Institute of Technology, he joined the faculty of MIT in 1955, where he has been professor emeritus since 1984. Earlier, in 1981, he moved from Florida State University, becoming professor emeritus in 1996. His work has largely been in the field of fluid mechanics, especially hydrodynamic stability, geophysical fluid dynamics and some aspects of turbulence. Other aspects of applied mathematics have also received his attention, especially reaction and diffusion equations and, most recently, models of semicrystalline polymers.

1997 OTTO LAPORTE AWARD

Established in 1985 by Friends of Otto Laporte and the Division of Fluid Dynamics to recognize outstanding research accomplishments pertaining to the physics of fluids.

Marvin Emanuel Goldstein
National Aeronautics & Space Administration

Citation: " For his seminal theoretical elucidation of the roles of receptivity and nonlinearity in the transition to turbulence of shear flows, for his discovery that capillary force can be the source of absolute instability in a liquid jet, for his lasting contribution to aeroacoustics and rapid distortion theory and for his exemplary roles in the fluid dynamics community."

Goldstein is currently chief scientist of NASA's Lewis Research Center. His research areas include transition and turbulence in fluids, aeroelasticity and aeroacoustics, and fundamental theory of turbomachinery. He has served on the Executive Committee of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics, has published more than 100 technical papers and authored a book on aeroacoustics which has been translated into Russian and Japanese.

1997 AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN PLASMA PHYSICS RESEARCH

Established in 1981 by friends of the APS Division of Plasma Physics to recognize a particular recent outstanding achievement in plasma physics research.

Fred Michael Levinton
Fusion and Physics Technology, Inc.

Citation: "For his conception and development of the Motional Stark Effect diagnostic technique for measuring the local magnetic field inside a plasma, providing information critical to understanding magnetic plasma confinement."

Levinton received his Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University in 1983. Following postdoctoral work, he joined the Plasma Technology Division of JAYCOR in 1984 and worked at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory on the S-1 spheromak, studying equilibrium and confinement. On the PBX-M tokamak, he developed the motional stark effect (MSE) diagnostic to measure the internal magnetic field in a high-temperature plasma. In 1990, he was a founding member of Fusion Physics and Technology, Inc. He has since been investigating current profile effects on the sawtooth instability in plasmas. Using the MSE diagnostic, he developed a reversed magnetic shear q-profile which led to the enhanced reverse shear mode on TFTR. His recent efforts have been to study the effect of reversed magnetic shear on plasma transport and stability, and the extension of the MSE diagnostic to measurement of electric fields of plasmas.

1997 OUTSTANDING DOCTORAL THESIS IN PLASMA PHYSICS AWARD

This award, established in 1985 and currently sponsored by General Atomics, is intended to provide recognition to exceptional young scientists who have performed original doctoral thesis work of outstanding quality and achievement in the area of plasma physics.

Stefano Coda
M.I.T.

Citation: "For development and application of phase-contrast imaging techniques to measurements of turbulence in high temperature plasmas, including critical comparisons to theory and the discovery of radial modes in the plasma edge."

Born and raised in Italy, Coda received his undergraduate Laurea degree in physics from the University of Pisa, Italy, in 1986. For his undergraduate thesis, he worked for one year on the JET tokamak in Culham, UK. After two years with the Versator-II team at MIT, he moved to General Atomics in San Diego, where he carried out his graduate dissertation research. He received his Ph.D. degree in 1997 from MIT. Coda is presently working on electron-cyclotron heating and confinement studies on the TCV tokamak at the CRPP laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland.

1997 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL PRIZE

Established in 1975 and funded by Maxwell Technologies, Inc. to recognize outstanding contributions to the field of plasma physics.

Charles F. Kennel
UCLA

Citation: "For his fundamental contributions to the basic plasma physics of collisionless shocks, magnetic reconnection and quasilinear theory, and to plasma astrophysics - including the Van Allen radiation belt and the Crab Nebula."

Kennel received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in Astrophysical Sciences in 1964. He has been a tenured member of the UCLA Department of Physics since 1967, and was its Chair from 1983-86. For the past thirty years, Kennel has been a leading plasma theorist in space physics and has made fundamental contributions to basic plasma physics and plasma astrophysics including developing relativistic MHD wind theory has been widely used in astrophysics. He has served on a wide variety of scientific panels, advisory boards, and councils, serving most recently as Associate Administrator of NASA for Mission to Planet Earth from 1993 to 1996 and in 1996 assumed his position as Executive Vice Chancellor at UCLA.

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Editor: Barrett H. Ripin

November 1997 (Volume 6, Number 10)

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Articles in this Issue
APS 1998 March Meeting
APS President Urges Congress to Support Neutron Science
Highlights from PC'97 Meeting: Computation at the Physics Interface
Clinton Nominates Physicists for Key OSTP Positions
Ray Selected as Ramavataram Fellow
Career Directions
Physicists To Be Honored at November Meetings
Two Young Physicists Receive DAMOP Thesis Award
APS Publication Oversight Committee Participants
APS Joseph F. Keithley Award
In Brief
APS Views: FAQs About Electronic Abstracts
Letters
Zero Gravity: The Lighter Side of Science
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