Physicist to be Honored at DAMOP '98

Three physicists will be honored for their work at the 1998 meeting of the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (DAMOP), to be held 27-30 May 1998 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

1998 DAVISSON-GERMER PRIZE

The Davisson-Germer Prize was established in 1965 by AT&T Bell Laboratories. It is intended to recognize and encourage outstanding work in atomic physics or surface physics.

Sheldon Datz
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Citation: "For his broad contributions that have provided new understanding of the dynamics of atomic interactions with ions, electrons and photons at energies ranging from a fraction of a milli-ev to many trillion-ev."

Datz earned his BS and MA in physical chemistry from Columbia University. He joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1951, where he began work on the application of molecular beam techniques to the study of chemically reactive collisions. Datz received his PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Tennessee in 1960. Four years later, he initiated work on channeling energetic heavy ions of crystals and later on radiation from channeled relativistic positrons and electrons. In 1981, he initiated the first measurements of dielectronic recombination of multicharged ions. Recently, worked on atomic collisions at ultrarelativistic energies at CERN and, molecular ion dissociative recombination in ion storage rings.

1998 EARLE K. PLYLER PRIZE

The Earle K. Plyler Prize was established in 1976 by the George E. Crouch Foundation to recognize and encourage notable contributions to molecular spectroscopy.

Forrest Fleming Crim
University of Wisconsin
Citation: "For the application of novel and powerful spectroscopic and dynamics techniques to elegantly demonstrate the feasibility of bond-selective photodissociation of molecules, holding the promise of control of chemical reactions by light."

Crim received his PhD in physical chemistry from Cornell University in 1974 and immediately joined Western Electric Company's Engineering Research Center. After a brief stint as a postdoctoral staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory, he joined the chemistry department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1977, where he has remained ever since. His research in chemical dynamics uses lasers to study the fundamental details of chemical reactions by creating highly energized molecules and following them spectroscopically. Using this approach, his group has demonstrated vibrational sate control of the pathways in photodissociation and bimolecular reaction.

1998 WILL ALLIS PRIZE

Established in 1989 by contributions from AT&T, General Electric, GTE, IBM and Xerox, the Allis Prize is intended to recognize and encourage outstanding research into the microscopic or macroscopic behavior of ionized gases. M. Raymond Flannery Georgia Institute of Technology Citation: "For advancing the understanding of recombination processes, in particular for developing a microscopic theory of three-body ionic recombination; and for his novel applications of classical and quantum mechanical methods to the dynamics of atomic, molecular and ionic systems." Flannery received his PhD degree in theoretical physics from The Queen's University of Belfast in 1964, and held faculty positions at Queen's University, Harvard University and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics prior to joining the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1971, where he was appointed Regents' Professor in 1993. He is a Divisional Associate editor of PRL. His area of expertise is in the theory of recombination processes at thermal and ultra cold energies. Flannery has also contributed widely to the theory of heavy-particle collisions, electron-excited atom collisions, Rydberg collisions and ion-molecule reactions.