| | 81 | Name: | Dr. Charles P. Slichter | | | Institution: | University of Illinois | | | Year Elected: | 1971 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1924 | | | Death Date: | February 19, 2018 | | | | | | |
Internationally recognized in condensed matter physics, Charles Slichter was one of the world's top research scientists in the area of magnetic resonance and a leading innovator in applications of resonance techniques to understanding the structure of matter. Dr. Slichter's deep physical insight and elegant experimental mastery have allowed him to make seminal contributions to an extraordinarily broad range of problems of both great theoretical interest and technological importance in physics and chemistry. Dr. Slichter received his A.B. (1946), M.A. (1947), and Ph.D. (1949) degrees from Harvard College, all in physics. During World War II, he worked as a research assistant at the Underwater Explosives Research Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts while an undergraduate at Harvard. He went to the University of Illinois in 1949 as an instructor in physics, was promoted to assistant professor in 1951, to associate professor in 1954, and to full professor in 1955. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1967, to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1969, and to the American Philosophical Society in 1971. He had received the Langmuir Prize in Chemical Physics (American Physical Society, 1969), the Triennial Prize (International Society of Magnetic Resonance, 1986), the Comstock Prize (National Academy of Sciences, 1993), and the Oliver E. Buckley Prize in Condensed Matter Physics (American Physical Society, 1996), and the 2007 National Medal of Science. Although he retired from teaching in 1996, Dr. Slichter maintained an active research program. His textbook, Principles of Magnetic Resonance, in its third printing, has served as the standard in the field for three and a half decades. He directed the Ph.D. research of 63 Illinois graduates, a group that is contributing immeasurably to industry and academia. Charles Slichter died February 19, 2018, at the age of 94. | |
| 82 | Name: | Dr. Horst L. Stormer | | | Institution: | Columbia University | | | Year Elected: | 2006 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1949 | | | | | | |
Horst Störmer has been the foremost leader in the study of the properties of electrons moving in thin layers fabricated for electronic and optical devices. His work was recognized with the Nobel Prize in 1998 for the discovery of the Fractional Quantum Hall effect which is understood to be a completely new state of matter. Energetic and charismatic, Dr. Störmer has been a true leader, training many graduate and postdoctoral students who have gone on to establish major programs at our best universities. He is currently Professor of Physics and Applied Physics and the founding Scientific Director of the Nanotechnology Institute at Columbia University, a highly successful academic enterprise, and he has also been affiliated with research departments of Bell Laboratories/ Lucent Technologies since 1977. A native of Germany, Dr. Störmer earned his Ph.D. from Stuttgart University (1977). He has been honored with the American Physical Society's Buckley Award (1984), the Franklin Institute's Franklin Medal (1998) and membership in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1992) and the National Academy of Sciences (1998). | |
| 83 | Name: | Dr. Julius Adams Stratton | | | Institution: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 1956 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1901 | | | Death Date: | 6/22/94 | | | | |
| 84 | Name: | Dr. Chauncey G. Suits | | | Institution: | General Electric | | | Year Elected: | 1951 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1905 | | | Death Date: | 8/14/91 | | | | |
| 85 | Name: | Dr. Verner E. Suomi | | | Institution: | University of Wisconsin | | | Year Elected: | 1976 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1915 | | | Death Date: | 7/30/95 | | | | |
| 86 | Name: | Dr. Joseph Hooton Taylor | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 1992 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1941 | | | | | | |
Joseph H. Taylor, Jr., is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He received his B.A. in physics from Haverford College in 1963 and his Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University in 1968. Affiliated with the University of Massachusetts between 1969 and 1981, he also served as a consultant in mathematics/neurosurgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1980 he joined the faculty of Princeton University; he received a MacArthur Foundation Prize at the same time. Greatly expanding upon his childhood love of radio-frequency electronics, Dr. Taylor's research explores problems in astrophysics and gravitational physics by means of radio-wavelength studies of pulsars. The importance of his efforts was acknowledged in 1992 by the Wolf Prize in Physics, and in 1993 he was co-recipient (with Russell A Hulse) of the Nobel Prize in Physics for the "discovery of a new type of pulsar, thus opening up new possibilities for the study of gravitation." Dr. Taylor served as Dean of the Faculty at Princeton from 1997 to 2003. A prolific author and lecturer, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1992. | |
| 87 | Name: | Dr. Kip S. Thorne | | | Institution: | California Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 1999 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1940 | | | | | | |
Born in Logan, Utah in 1940, Kip Thorne received his B.S. degree from the California Institute of Technolgy in 1962 and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1965. He returned to Caltech as an associate professor in 1967 and became Professor of Theoretical Physics in 1970, the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor in 1981, and the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics in 1991. Dr. Thorne's research has focused on Einstein's general theory of relativity and on astrophysics, with emphasis on relativistic stars, black holes and especially gravitational waves. He was co-founder (with R. Weiss and R.W.P. Drever) of the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) Project, with which he is still associated. He is a member of the LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) International Science Team. Dr. Thorne was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1972, the National Academy of Sciences in 1973 and the Russian Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society in 1999. He has been awarded the Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society, the Karl Schwarzschild Medal of the German Astronomical Society, the Shaw Prize in Astronomy, and the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics. For his book for nonscientists, Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy (1994), Dr. Thorne was awarded the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award, the Phi Beta Kappa Science Writing Award, and the (Russian) Priroda Readers' Choice Award. In 2017 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Rainer Weiss and Barry Barish "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves." Dr. Thorne has won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Rainer Weiss and Barry Barish "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves." He was also a science consultant to the screenwriter and director of the 2014 film Intersteller and wrote the book The Science of Intersteller to explain the very deep physics that underlies some of the amazing sights from the movie: black holes, higher dimensions and 4,000 foot-tall waves. In 1973 Dr. Thorne co-authored the textbook Gravitation, from which most of the present generation of scientists have learned general relativity theory. Approximately 40 physicists have received the Ph.D. at Caltech under Dr. Thorne's personal mentorship. | |
| 88 | Name: | Dr. Charles H. Townes | | | Institution: | University of California, Berkeley | | | Year Elected: | 1960 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1915 | | | Death Date: | January 27, 2015 | | | | | | |
Dr. Charles H. Townes was a staff member of Bell Laboratories, Professor of Physics at Columbia University, Vice President of the Institute of Defense Analysis, Provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University Professor of Physics at the University of California. His principal scientific work was in microwave spectroscopy, nuclear and molecular structure, quantum electronics, radio astronomy, and infrared astronomy. He received the Nobel Prize in 1964 for invention of the maser and laser.
During much of his career, Dr. Townes served as a government advisor. He was vice-chairman of the President's Science Advisory Committee and chairman of the technical advisory committee for the Apollo Program. He had been involved in the National Academy of Science's contacts with China, work on Arms Control, meetings with the Soviet Academy, and in the Pontifical Academy.
Since the mid 1960's Dr. Townes had been active in discussions of the interactions between science and religion and has written extensively on this subject.
Charles Townes died January 27, 2015, at the age of 99. | |
| 89 | Name: | Dr. Sam Bard Treiman | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 1999 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1925 | | | Death Date: | 11/30/99 | | | | |
| 90 | Name: | Dr. Michael S. Turner | | | Institution: | University of Chicago | | | Year Elected: | 2017 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1949 | | | | | | |
Michael S. Turner is a theoretical astrophysicist and the Bruce V. & Diana M. Rauner Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago and Senior Strategic Advisor to the Kavli Foundation. He was Director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at Chicago, which he helped to establish, from 2010 to 2019 is a past-President of the American Physical Society, the 50,000 member organization of physicists. Previous positions include Scientist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (from 1983 to 1997), assistant Director for the Mathematical and Physical Sciences of the National Science Foundation (2003 to 2006), Chief Scientist of Argonne National Laboratory (2006 to 2008), Chair of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics (1997 to 2003), and President (1989 to 1994) and Chairman of the Board (2009 to 2012) of the Aspen Center for Physics.
Turner was born in Los Angeles, CA, and attended public schools there; he received his B.S. from Caltech (1971), his M.S. (1973) and Ph.D. (1978) from Stanford (all in physics). He holds an honorary D.Sc. (2005) from Michigan State University and was awarded a Distinguished Alumnus Award from Caltech in 2006. Turner helped to pioneer the interdisciplinary field of particle astrophysics and cosmology, and with Edward Kolb initiated the Fermilab astrophysics program which today accounts for about 10% of the lab’s activities today. He led the National Academy study Quarks to the Cosmos that laid out the strategic vision for the field. Turner’s scholarly contributions include predicting cosmic acceleration and coining the term dark energy, showing how quantum fluctuations evolved into the seed perturbations for galaxies during cosmic inflation, and several key ideas that led to the cold dark matter theory of structure formation. His honors include Warner Prize of the American Astronomical Society, the Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society (APS), the Klopsted Award of the American Association of Physics Teachers, the Heineman Prize (with Kolb) of the AAS and American Institute of Physics, the 2011 Darwin Lecture of the Royal Astronomical Society and 2013 Ryerson Lecture at the University of Chicago. Turner’s twenty-plus former Ph.D. students hold faculty positions at leading universities around the country (e.g., Chicago, Caltech and University of Michigan), at national laboratories (Fermilab, JPL, and Argonne) and on Wall Street.
Turner’s national service includes membership on more than 10 NRC Boards and Committees including the Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy (COSEPUP), the Senior Editorial Board of Science Magazine, Chairmanship of the
OECD Global Science Forum’s Astroparticle Physics International Forum, a member of the Board of Directors of the Fermi Research Alliance, member of the NASA Advisory Council, Secretary and Chair of Class I of the National Academy of Sciences, and the founding Chair of ScienceCounts, a 501©3 organization that promotes the awareness and support of science. | |
| 91 | Name: | Dr. George E. Uhlenbeck | | | Institution: | Rockefeller University | | | Year Elected: | 1957 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1900 | | | Death Date: | 11/2/88 | | | | |
| 92 | Name: | Dr. Alvin M. Weinberg | | | Institution: | Oak Ridge Associated Universities | | | Year Elected: | 1977 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1915 | | | Death Date: | October 18, 2006 | | | | |
| 93 | Name: | Dr. Steven Weinberg | | | Institution: | University of Texas at Austin | | | Year Elected: | 1982 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1933 | | | Death Date: | July 23, 2021 | | | | | | |
Steven Weinberg was the 2004 recipient of the Society's Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in Science. He was educated at Cornell University (A.B., 1954) and the Copenhagen Institute for Theoretical Physics (now the Niels Bohr Institute) and received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1957. He taught at Columbia University for two years before moving to the University of California, Berkeley. From 1966 to 1969, on leave from Berkeley, Dr. Weinberg held positions at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a professor at MIT from 1969 to 1973 before officially joining Harvard's faculty in 1973 as the Higgins Professor of Physics. Ten years later Dr. Weinberg moved to the University of Texas as the Josey Regental Professor of Science while continuing at Harvard as the Morris Loeb Visiting Professor of Physics. He has also held positions at the Imperial College, London, and Stanford University, and was a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for ten years. Among his many distinctions are the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979, the National Medal of Science in 1991, the Humanist of the Year award from the American Humanist Association in 2002, and the 2020 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. The prize certificate citation for Steven Weinberg's Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences reads, "In recognition of his role as a leading architect of the electroweak theory of interactions, a theory that unites the weak and the electromagnetic forces of nature. This was the first such unification since Maxwell had shown in the nineteenth century that electricity and magnetism are manifestations of the same phenomenon. In recognition of his highly regarded textbooks, including Gravitation and Cosmology and The Quantum Theory of Fields (in 3 volumes); his books for the general audience, most notably The First Three Minutes; and his extensive writing on subjects of public interest, such as ballistic missile defense. The American Philosophical Society salutes Steven Weinberg, considered by many to be the preeminent theoretical physicist alive in the world today." Dr. Weinberg has been a member of the American Philosophical Society since 1982. | |
| 94 | Name: | Dr. Victor F. Weisskopf | | | Institution: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 1966 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1908 | | | Death Date: | April 22, 2002 | | | | |
| 95 | Name: | Dr. John Archibald Wheeler | | | Institution: | Princeton University & University of Texas at Austin & Center for Theoretical Physics | | | Year Elected: | 1951 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1911 | | | Death Date: | April 13, 2008 | | | | |
| 96 | Name: | Dr. Eugene P. Wigner | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 1944 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1902 | | | Death Date: | 1/1/95 | | | | |
| 97 | Name: | Dr. Frank Wilczek | | | Institution: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 2005 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1951 | | | | | | |
Frank Wilczek is considered one of the world's most original and productive theoretical physicists. At the age of 21, with David Gross, he developed the theoretical framework for what was to become Quantum Chromodynamics, the theory of the forces that bind quarks and gluons together to form particles such as the proton. It was for this work that he was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics. In addition to his technical contributions he has frequently published articles for other physicists explaining the subtleties of complicated theories, as well as numerous articles for the lay person. Dr. Wilczek received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1974 and taught there until 1981 when he moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study from 1989-2000, and since 2000 he has served as the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2014 he was honored with the Award for Essays from the Gravity Research Foundation. | |
| 98 | Name: | Dr. Robert R. Wilson | | | Institution: | Cornell University | | | Year Elected: | 1969 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1914 | | | Death Date: | January 18, 2000 | | | | |
| 99 | Name: | Dr. Kenneth G. Wilson | | | Institution: | Ohio State University | | | Year Elected: | 1984 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1936 | | | Death Date: | June 15, 2013 | | | | | | |
Kenneth Wilson was born in 1936 in Waltham, Massachusetts, the son of a very distinguished chemist who taught at Harvard University throughout his career. Dr. Wilson was an undergraduate at Harvard College and obtained his doctorate in 1961 from the California Institute of Technology, where he was a student of Murray Gell-Mann. He was then a Junior Fellow in Harvard's Society of Fellows before joining Cornell University's Department of Physics in 1963. He held a professorship there beginning in 1970 and became the James A. Weeks Chair in Physical Sciences in 1974. Dr. Wilson became the Director of the Center for Theory and Simulation in Science and Engineering (Cornell Theory Center) - one of five national supercomputer centers created by the National Science Foundation - in 1985. In 1988 he moved to The Ohio State University's Department of Physics, where he became the Hazel C. Youngberg Trustees Distinguished Professor. From 1991-96 he was co-principal investigator on Ohio's Project Discovery, one of the National Science Foundation's Statewide Systemic Initiatives. Dr. Wilson co-directed Learning by Redesign. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1975. In 1980 he shared Israel's Wolf Prize in Physics with Michael Fisher and Leo Kadanoff. The ultimate recognition of his achievements in physics came with his 1982 award of the Nobel Prize in Physics, presented for discoveries he made in understanding how bulk matter undergoes "phase transition", i.e. sudden and profound structural changes resulting from variations in environmental conditions. Dr. Wilson's background prior to educational reform ranged from elementary particle theory and condensed matter physics (critical phenomena and the Kondo problem) to quantum chemistry and computer science. He also helped to popularize C++ among theoretical physicists. He became emeritus from Ohio State University in 2006 and moved to Gray, Maine. He died June 15, 2013, at the age of 77. | |
| 100 | Name: | Dr. Edward Witten | | | Institution: | Institute for Advanced Study | | | Year Elected: | 1993 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1951 | | | | | | |
Edward Witten received a Ph.D. at Princeton University in 1976. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University in 1977 and a Junior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows, from 1977-80. He was professor of physics at Princeton University from 1980-87 before joining the Institute for Advanced Study as a professor in the School of Natural Sciences in 1987. He also served for two years as a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology. Edward Witten's recent research is at the interface of elementary particle physics and geometry. He has revolutionized the study of three and four dimensional spaces, using insights from quantum mechanics. Invariants of knots in three space, obtained from quantum field theory, is a noteworthy example. He made important contributions to the quantization of gauge theories and is a world leader in developing string theory. Understanding the geometric concepts in terms of which string theory should be formulated is his main goal. Dr. Witten is a brilliant lecturer and an inspiration to a new generation of mathematical physicists. He was a MacArthur Fellowship recipient in 1982 and has also been honored with the Einstein Medal of the Einstein Society of Bern, Switzerland (1985); the Dirac Medal of the International Center for Theoretical Physics (1986); the Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation (1986); the Fields Medal of the International Union of Mathematicians (1990); the Klein Medal from Stockholm University (1998); the Dannie Heineman Prize from the American Institute of Physics (1998); the Nemmers Prize in Mathematics from Northwestern University (2000); the Clay Research Award (2001); The Isaac Newton Medal of the Institute of Physics (2010); the Lorentz Medal of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2010); the Solomon Lefschetz Medal by the Mathematical Society of Mexico (2011), the inaugural Fundamental Physics Prize established by Yuri Milner (2012), the Kyoto Prize (2014), and the Albert Einstein World Award of Science (2016). He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1993. | |
| |