| | 1 | Name: | Dr. James A. Van Allen | | | Institution: | University of Iowa | | | Year Elected: | 1961 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1914 | | | Death Date: | August 9, 2006 | | | | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Luis Walter Alvarez | | | Institution: | University of California, Berkeley | | | Year Elected: | 1953 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1911 | | | Death Date: | 9/1/88 | | | | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Robert Fox Bacher | | | Institution: | California Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 1948 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1905 | | | Death Date: | November 18, 2004 | | | | |
| 4 | Name: | Dr. John Bardeen | | | Institution: | University of Illinois | | | Year Elected: | 1958 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1908 | | | Death Date: | 1/30/91 | | | | |
| 5 | Name: | Dr. Gordon Alan Baym | | | Institution: | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign & Niels Bohr Institute | | | Year Elected: | 2000 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1935 | | | | | | |
Gordon Baym received a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University in 1960. He was an NSF postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen (1960-62), and then a lecturer and assistant research physicist at the University of California, Berkeley (1962-63). In 1963, he moved to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign where he has served as Center for Advanced Study Professor of Physics and George and Ann Fisher Distinguished Professor of Engineering. He is currently Professor Emeritus and Research Professor at University of Illinois, as well as Adjunct Professor at the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen. He was an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research fellow (1965-67) and an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation fellow (1983-88). A theoretical physicist of unusual depth and breadth, he pioneered the application of field-theoretic methods to quantum condensed matter systems. He is a leading theorist of quantum solids and liquids, nuclei, astronomical objects, and ultracold trapped atomic systems. His papers on neutron stars described the unusual matter they contain, their structure, and formation in supernova explosions. He played a key intellectual role in building the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven. Active in the history of science, he chaired the American Physical Society Forum on the History of Physics (1995-97). Dr. Baym is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. Among his awards are three from the American Physical Society: the Hans A. Bethe Prize in 2002, the Lars Onsager Prize in 2008, and the Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research in 2021. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2000. | |
| 6 | Name: | Dr. Hans A. Bethe | | | Institution: | Cornell University | | | Year Elected: | 1947 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1906 | | | Death Date: | March 6, 2005 | | | | |
| 7 | Name: | Dr. Robert J. Birgeneau | | | Institution: | University of California, Berkeley | | | Year Elected: | 2006 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1942 | | | | | | |
Robert J. Birgeneau became the ninth chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, on September 22, 2004. An internationally distinguished physicist, he is a leader in higher education and is well known for his commitment to diversity and equity in the academic community. He stepped down from the Chancellorship in May 2013 and returned to the faculty in the Department of Physics at Berkeley.
Before coming to Berkeley, Birgeneau served four years as president of the University of Toronto. He previously was Dean of the School of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he spent 25 years on the faculty. He is a fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of London, the American Philosophical Society and other scholarly societies. He has received many awards for teaching and research and is one of the most cited physicists in the world for his work on the fundamental properties of materials.
In 2006, Birgeneau received a special Founders Award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences along with President John Hennessy of Stanford University and filmmaker George Lucas. Established in the 225th anniversary year of the Academy, this award honors men, women and institutions that have advanced the ideals and embody the spirit of the Academy founders - a commitment to intellectual inquiry, leadership and active engagement. In 2008, Birgeneau and President Nancy Kantor of Syracuse University received the 2008 Carnegie Corporation Academic Leadership Award as "Champions of Excellence and Equity in Education." The American Institute of Physics awarded him the Karl Taylor Compton Medal for Leadership in Physics in 2012. In 2015 he was honored with the 2015 Darius and Susan Anderson Distinguished Service Award of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2016 he was chosen as the National Science Board's Vannevar Bush Awardee.
A Toronto native, Birgeneau received his B.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Toronto in 1963 and his Ph.D. in physics from Yale University in 1966. He served on the faculty of Yale for one year, spent one year at Oxford University, and was a member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories from 1968 to 1975. He joined the physics faculty at MIT in 1975 and was named Chair of the Physics Department in 1988 and Dean of Science in 1991. He became the 14th president of the University of Toronto on July 1, 2000.
He and his wife, Mary Catherine, have four grown children and eight grandchildren. | |
| 8 | Name: | Dr. Nicolaas Bloembergen | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 1982 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1920 | | | Death Date: | September 5, 2017 | | | | | | |
Nicolaas Bloembergen was born in Dordrecht, the Netherlands, in 1920. He obtained his Phil. Cand. and Phil. Drs. Degrees in physics at the University of Utrecht. In 1946 he came to the United States and worked with Professor E.M. Purcell at Harvard on Nuclear Magnetic Relaxation. This was the title of his Ph.D. thesis, submitted at the University of Leiden in 1948, where he was a research fellow in the Kamerkingh Onnes Laboratory. He returned to Harvard University in 1949 as a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows, became Associate Professor of Applied Physics in 1951, Gordon McKay Professor in 1957, Rumford Professor of Physics in 1974, and Gerhard Gade University Professor in 1981. Since 1990 he has been professor emeritus. He then held an honorary professorship in the Optical Sciences Center at the University of Arizona. His research was concerned with nuclear and electron paramagnetic resonance, microwave masers and nonlinear optics. He had supervised fifty-seven Ph.D. theses, and a similar number of post-doctoral fellows have worked in his laboratory. He was the author or co-author of over three hundred scientific papers published in professional journals and had written two monographs: Nuclear Magnetic Relaxation (republished 1961) and Nonlinear Optics (1965). He was a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1981, the Lorentz Medal of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences in 1978, and the National Medal of Science in 1974. He also received the Medal of Honor of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the Frederick Ives Medal of the Optical Society of America and the Stuart Ballantine Medal of the Franklin Institute. He was a member of various academies in the United States and abroad. In addition to his service on the faculty of the Arts and Sciences at Harvard University for four decades, he was a visiting professor in Paris, Leiden, Bangalore, Munich, Berkeley, and Pasadena. Furthermore, he had served on numerous advisory committees of U.S. government agencies and of industrial and academic institutions and on several editorial boards of scientific publications. In 1991 he was president of the American Physical Society. Nicolaas Bloembergen died September 5, 2017, in Tucson, Arizona, at the age of 97. | |
| 9 | Name: | Dr. Lewis M. Branscomb | | | Institution: | JFK School of Government, Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 1970 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1926 | | | Death Date: | May 31, 2023 | | | | | | |
Lewis M. Branscomb is Professor Emeritus of Public Policy and Corporate Management, Emeritus Director of the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program and a member of the Board of Directors of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. At present, he is also Adjunct Professor at the University of California, San Diego's School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and Distinguished Research Fellow, Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation, University of California. His AB in physics is from Duke University in 1945, summa cum laude, and his Ph.D. degree in physics from Harvard University in 1950, after which he was Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows. A research physicist at the U.S. National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology) from 1951-69, he was Director of NBS from 1969-72. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Science, National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine. In 1972 Dr. Branscomb was named vice president and chief scientist of IBM and a member of the Corporate Management Board, serving until his retirement in 1986. He also served as chairman of the National Science Board from 1980-84. Dr. Branscomb is a former director of Mobil Corp. and General Foods Corp. and serves on the Board of Lord Corporation. He is an emeritus trustee of Vanderbilt University, member of the C.S. Draper Laboratory Corporation, and emeritus Trustee of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He is a former Overseer of Harvard University. He has served five presidents in various advisory and executive positions. Dr. Branscomb's awards include the National Science Board's Vannevar Bush Award (2001); the Rockefeller Public Service Award (1957-58); the Gold Medal for Exceptional Service from the U.S. Department of Commerce (1961); the Arthur Bueche Prize of the National Academy of Engineering (1987); and the Okawa Prize in Communications and Informatics (1999). He pioneered the spectroscopy of atomic and molecular negative ions and studied their role in stellar atmospheres and chemical aeronomy. His current research is on early-stage high-tech innovation, innovation policy in China, business development in the field of information technology, the role of science and technology in countering terrorism, and a new policy paradigm for federal support of basic research. His recent books include (with Philip Auerswald, Todd LaPorte and Erwann Michel-Kerjan) Seeds of Disaster, Roots of Response (2006); (with Richard Klausner) Making the Nation Safer: S&T for Countering Terrorism (2002); (with Philip E. Auerswald) "Between Invention and Innovation: An Analysis of the Funding for Early Stage Technology Development" (2003); (with Philip Auerswald, Nicholas Demos and Brian K. Min) "Understanding Private-Sector Decision Making for Early-Stage Technology Development" (2003); (with Philip Auerswald) "Start-Ups and Spin-offs: Collective Entrepreneurship Between Invention and Innovation," in The Emergence of Entrepreneurship Policy: Governance, Start-Ups, and Growth in the Knowledge Economy (2003); (with Philip Auerswald) Taking Technical Risks: How Innovators, Managers and Investors Manage Risk in High Tech Innovation (2001); (with Fumio Kodama and Richard Florida) "Industrializing Knowledge: University-Industry Linkages in Japan and the United States (1999); and (with James Keller) Investing in Innovation: Creating a Research and Innovation Policy that Works (1998). | |
| 10 | Name: | Dr. Brian O'Brien | | | Year Elected: | 1953 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1898 | | | Death Date: | July 1, 1992 | | | | |
| 11 | Name: | Dr. Harvey Brooks | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 1961 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1915 | | | Death Date: | May 28, 2004 | | | | |
| 12 | Name: | Dr. Steven Chu | | | Institution: | Stanford University | | | Year Elected: | 1998 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1948 | | | | | | |
Steve Chu became Berkeley Lab's sixth director on August 1, 2004 and served in that capacity through 2008, when he was named Secretary of Energy in the incoming Obama Administration. He was confirmed as Secretary on January 20, 2009 and returned to Stanford in 2013 as William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Humanities and Sciences, Professor of Physics, and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology.
A Nobel Prize-winning scholar and international expert in atomic physics, laser spectroscopy, biophysics and polymer physics, Dr. Chu oversaw the oldest and most varied of the Department of Energy's multi-program research laboratories, the Berkeley Lab. Berkeley Lad has an annual budget of over $600 million and a workforce of about 4,000. His distinguished career in laboratory research began as a postdoctoral fellow in physics at the University of California's Berkeley campus from 1976-78, during which time he also utilized the facilities of Berkeley Lab. His first career appointment was as a member of the technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J. where, from 1978-87, his achievements with laser spectroscopy and quantum physics became widely recognized. During the last four years there, he was Head of the Quantum Electronics Research Department, during which time much of his groundbreaking work in cooling and trapping atoms by laser took place. That work eventually led to the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997, an honor he shared with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji of France and United States colleague William D. Phillips. Their discoveries, focusing on the so-called "optical tweezers" laser trap, were instrumental in the study of fundamental phenomena and in measuring important physical quantities with unprecedented precision. At the time, Dr. Chu was the Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University, where he remained for 17 years as a highly decorated scientist, teacher and administrator. While at Stanford, he chaired the physics department from 1990-93 and from 1999-2001. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and l'Academica Sinica. He is also a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Korean Academy of Sciences and Technology. Dr. Chu has won dozens of awards in addition to the Nobel Prize, including the Science for Art Prize, the Herbert Broida Prize for Spectroscopy, the Richtmeyer Memorial Prize Lecturer, the King Faisal International Prize for Science, the Arthur Schawlow Prize for Laser Science, and the William Meggers Award for Laser Spectroscopy. He was a Humboldt Senior Scientist and a Guggenheim Fellow. In 2008 he delivered the Hans Bethe Lecture at Cornell University entitled "The World's Energy Problem and What We Can Do About It." Born in St. Louis and raised in New York, Dr. Chu earned an A.B. in mathematics and a B.S. in physics at the University of Rochester and a Ph.D. in physics at UC Berkeley. He is author or co-author of more that 200 articles and professional papers, and over two dozen former members of his group are now professors at leading research universities around the world. | |
| 13 | Name: | Dr. John Clarke | | | Institution: | University of California, Berkeley | | | Year Elected: | 2017 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1942 | | | | | | |
John Clarke has led in the understanding and the development of the SQUID (Superconducting Quantum Interference Device) and exploration of this high sensitivity device for fundamental studies and applications. He has explored and demonstrated how this device can be used for measurements with a sensitivity up to the quantum mechanical limit. His studies have addressed the sources of 1/f noise, the limits of quantum computing, and the applications of SQUIDs for geological exploration and medical imaging. Clarke has co-authored the "handbook" of SQUID applications for high sensitivity electromagnetic measurements in a wide variety of fields and is universally known for this work. | |
| 14 | Name: | Dr. Marvin L. Cohen | | | Institution: | University of California, Berkeley | | | Year Elected: | 2003 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1935 | | | | | | |
Marvin Cohen created and applied a quantum theory for explaining and predicting properties of materials. His approach is used worldwide, and it is referred to as "the standard model of solids." The theoretical tools he developed and his insightful applications have formed the basis for much of our understanding of semiconductors and nanoscience. Dr. Cohen is a person of broad experience and influence. He has served as president of the American Physical Society and has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is currently University Professor of Physics and Senior Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, since 1966. His many honors include the Oliver E. Buckley Prize for Solid State Physics (1979); the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society (1994); the National Medal of Science (2002); the Forsight Institute Richard P. Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology (2003); the Technology Pioneer Award from the World Economic Forum (2007); and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics from the Franklin Institute (2017). Dr. Cohen is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1980) and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1993) and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1997). | |
| 15 | Name: | Dr. Leon N Cooper | | | Institution: | Brown University & Institute for Brain and Neural Systems | | | Year Elected: | 1973 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1930 | | | | | | |
Winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize for Physics, Leon Cooper is known for his role in developing the BCS theory of superconductivity and for the concept of Cooper electron pairs that bears his name. Dr. Cooper received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1954 and taught at the Institute for Advanced Study, the University of Illinois and Ohio State University before moving to Brown University in 1958. At present he is Thomas J. Watson, Sr. Professor of Science at Brown and Director of the Institute for Brain and Neural Systems. His research at Brown focuses primarily on neural networks (architecture, learning rules, real world applications; biological basis of memory and learning; visual cortex: comparison of theory and experiment, mean field theories and foundations of the Quantum Theory). Dr. Cooper is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and a member of the Natural Academy of Sciences, among other distinctions. | |
| 16 | Name: | Dr. James Watson Cronin | | | Institution: | University of Chicago | | | Year Elected: | 1999 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1931 | | | Death Date: | August 25, 2016 | | | | | | |
James Watson Cronin received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He was an assistant physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory for three years before joining the faculty at Princeton University in 1955. In 1971 he became a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Chicago, where he remained for the rest of his career. In 1980, James Cronin and Val Fitch were awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering a violation of the laws of symmetry in connection with the K-mesons produced at the Brookhaven proton accelerator. Dr. Cronin led the most ambitious international project for detecting the highest energy cosmic rays. The Pierre Auger Project called for the construction of a pair of 3,000 sq. km. arrays, one in Utah, the other on the high desert of Argentina. Comprised of 3,200 large Cerenkov detectors, the array will be capable of sensing cosmic rays in an entirely new and exciting energy regime. Dr. Cronin was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1999. | |
| 17 | Name: | Dr. Carl David Anderson | | | Institution: | California Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 1938 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1905 | | | Death Date: | 1/11/91 | | | | |
| 18 | Name: | Dr. Robert H. Dicke | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 1978 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1916 | | | Death Date: | 3/4/97 | | | | |
| 19 | Name: | Dr. Robbert Dijkgraaf | | | Institution: | Government of The Netherlands | | | Year Elected: | 2013 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1960 | | | | | | |
Robbert Dijkgraaf, Director of the Institute for Advanced Study and Leon Levy Professor since July 2012, is a mathematical physicist who has made significant contributions to string theory and the advancement of science education. His research focuses on the interface between mathematics and particle physics. In addition to finding surprising and deep connections between matrix models, topological string theory, and supersymmetric quantum field theory, Dijkgraaf has developed precise formulas for the counting of bound states that explain the entropy of certain black holes. For his contributions to science, Dijkgraaf was awarded the Spinoza Prize, the highest scientific award in the Netherlands, in 2003, and was named a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion in 2012.
Past President (2008-12) of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and Co-Chair of the InterAcademy Council (since 2009), Dijkgraaf is a distinguished public policy adviser and passionate advocate for science and the arts. Many of his activities - which have included frequent appearances on Dutch television, a monthly newspaper column in NRC Handelsblad, several books for general audiences, and the launch of the science education website Proefjes.nl - are at the interface between science and society. | |
| 20 | Name: | Dr. Sidney Drell | | | Institution: | Stanford University | | | Year Elected: | 1987 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1926 | | | Death Date: | December 21, 2016 | | | | | | |
Sidney D. Drell was professor of theoretical physics (emeritus) at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), Stanford University, as well as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at the time of his death on December 21, 2016, at the age of 90. He served as SLAC's deputy director until retiring in 1998. A theoretical physicist and arms control specialist, Dr. Drell had also been active as an adviser to the executive and legislative branches of government on national security and defense technical issues. He was a founding member of JASON, a group of academic scientists who consult for the government on issues of national importance, and he acted as a consultant to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He was a member of the Advisory Committee to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA/DOE) and chaired the Senior Review Board for the Intelligence Technology Innovation Center. Dr. Drell was widely recognized for his contributions in the study of theoretical physics, particularly elementary particle processes and quantum theory. His work contributed to the early understanding of meson physics and quantum electrodynamics and then went beyond those areas, ranging from basic studies on quantum chromodynamics on a lattice to such "down the laboratory" problems as the interaction of monopoles with helium. He isolated the processes of secondary particle production from photons from hadron-hadron collisions. Among numerous awards, Dr. Drell received the Heinz award in 2005 for his contributions in public policy, and in 2000 he was awarded the Enrico Fermi Award, the nation's oldest award in science and technology, for a lifetime of achievement in the field of nuclear energy. He also received the 2012 National Medal of Science. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and was coauthor, with J.D. Bjorken, of two books on relativistic quantum mechanics and fields that have been widely translated and used for more than 30 years. | |
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