APS News

November 2005 (Volume 14, Number 10)

Physicists Honored at Fall Meetings

Five physicists are being honored with APS prizes and awards at two fall divisional meetings. The Maxwell Prize, Excellence in Plasma Physics Award, and Marshall Rosenbluth Thesis Award were presented at the annual meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics, held October 24-28 in Denver, Colorado. The Fluid Dynamics Prize and the Andreas Acrivos Dissertation Award will be presented at the annual meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics, to be held November 20-22 in Chicago, Illinois. The recipients, their citations, and short biographical information are below

2005 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL PRIZE
Nathaniel Fisch

Princeton University
Citation: "For theoretical development of efficient rf-driven current in plasmas and for greatly expanding our ability to understand, to analyze, and to utilize wave-plasma interactions."

Fisch is Professor of Astrophysical Sciences and Director of the Program in Plasma Physics at Princeton University. He also is an Associated Faculty in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Associate Director for Academic Affairs at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. He studied Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was an MIT National Scholar, earning his PhD degree in 1978. Fisch predicted new ways to drive electric current in hot, magnetized plasma by means of electromagnetic waves. These currents are now used to operate tokamaks continuously and to control heat transport. He is now exploring plasma-based methods of generating extreme laser intensities, plasma thrusters and related plasma devices, and fusion concepts employing magnetically or inertially confined plasma. Fisch received the APS Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics in 1992.

2005 EXCELLENCE IN PLASMA PHYSICS AWARD
Howard M. Milchberg

University of Maryland
Citation: "For the conception and first realization of hydrodynamic shock-formed plasma channels, and for the development of diagnostics for their characterization."

Milchberg completed his PhD in astrophysical sciences in 1985 at Princeton University, in the plasma physics program. His dissertation was on one of the first two soft x-ray lasers experimentally demonstrated. Milchberg then joined AT&T Bell Laboratories as a postdoctoral researcher, where he performed one of the first experiments in high intensity femtosecond laser-plasma interactions. In 1988 Milchberg joined the University of Maryland. He is a professor in the Institute for Physical Science and Technology, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Department of Physics. He is interested in all aspects of the interaction of intense short laser pulses with matter.

2005 MARSHALL ROSENBLUTH THESIS AWARD
Stefan P. Gerhardt

Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Citation: “For insightful theoretical modeling and innovative experimental measurement of plasma flows in three-dimensional toroidal geometries and demonstration of reduced parallel viscous damping with quasisymmetry.”

Gerhardt did his PhD work at the Helically Symmetric experiment, a quasiymmetric stellarator in the Electrical Engineering department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to participation in the initial commissioning of the HSX device, his dissertation work demonstrated the reduction in neoclassical flow damping in a quasisymmetric stellarator. Gerhardt is presently employed by the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, studying the formation and stability of compact toroid plasmas formed by spheromak merging.

2005 FLUID DYNAMICS PRIZE
Ronald Adrian

Arizona State University
Citation: “For his advancement of experimental techniques and their integration into experiments that have led to new insight into complex flows.”

Biographical information unavailable at press time.

2005 ANDREAS ACRIVOS THESIS AWARD
Silas D. Alben
Harvard University
Citation: “For elegant mathematical and numerical analysis of fluid-structure interaction to elucidate deformation-induced drag reduction of flexible membranes in a wind and induction of forward flight by the symmetry-breaking flapping of wings.”

Biographical information unavailable at press time.


©1995 - 2024, AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY
APS encourages the redistribution of the materials included in this newspaper provided that attribution to the source is noted and the materials are not truncated or changed.

Editor: Alan Chodos
Associate Editor: Jennifer Ouellette
Staff Writer: Ernie Tretkoff

November 2005 (Volume 14, Number 10)

APS News Home

Issue Table of Contents

APS News Archives

Contact APS News Editor


Articles in this Issue
Legal, Financial Issues Impact APS Name Change Decision
Famous Equation Holds Big Birthday Celebration
With One Data Set Analyzed, Einstein@Home Forges Ahead in Search for Gravitational Waves
OPA's Regan Spearheads Efforts to Develop New Grassroots Program
Three Physicists Share 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics
Percentage of First-Year Foreign Graduate Students Falls to 43%
WYP Speakers Program Going String, Will Continue Into 2006
Displaced Physicists Anticipate Return to Research and Teaching in New Orleans
Dispatches from the APS Mass Media Fellows
Physicists Honored at Fall Meetings
Letters
Viewpoint
The Back Page
Members in the Media
This Month in Physics History
International News: The Internationalization of Higher Education
Washington Dispatch
Zero Gravity: The Lighter Side of Science