American Philosophical Society
Member History

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Residency
International (1)
Resident (3)
Subdivision
106. Physics[X]
1Name:  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.
 
2Name:  Dr. Reimar Lüst
 Institution:  Max Planck Institute & University of Hamburg & Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
 Year Elected:  1999
 Class:  1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
 Subdivision:  106. Physics
 Residency:  International
 Living? :   Deceased
 Birth Date:  1923
 Death Date:  March 31, 2020
   
 
Reimer Lüst received his D.Sc. at the University of Göttingen. He has served as vice president of ESRO, chairman of the German Science Council, president of the Max Planck Gesellschaft, director-general of the European Space Agency, president of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and chairman of the Board of the International University Bremen. He is currently honorary president of the last two institutions and Professor at the University of Hamburg and Professor at the Technical University of Munich. He was visiting professor at New York University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology. He is the reciepient of numerous awards, including the Theodore von Karman Award, the Marin Drinov Medal of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the Harnack Medal of the Max Planck Society, the Adenauer de Gaulle Prize, and the Weizmann Award in the Humanities and Science from the Weizmann Institute, Israel. Dr. Lüst has served as Chairman of the board of trustees of the Deutsches Museum, Munich and as chairman of Humboldt Universitats-Gesellschaft. He is a member of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Academy of Sciences, Madrid, the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, and the Ostereichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. He was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1999. Dr. Lüst's scientific career began with a series of research papers in plasma physics, cosmic rays, and magnetic hydrodynamics as related to thermonuclear fusion. He moved on to studies of the aurora and other aspects of planetary science. Early on, he was recognized as a very gifted science administrator and held in succession the most important directorships in European space science. When he became Director of ESA, the European Space Agency, he welded a highly successful union of all the advanced European scientific nations out of what had been a contentious, bickering community. He died on March 31, 2020, at age 97.
 
3Name:  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.
 
4Name:  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
   
Election Year
1999[X]