| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Pierre Aigrain | | | Institution: | Université de Paris VII | | | Year Elected: | 1981 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1924 | | | Death Date: | October 30, 2002 | | | | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Hannes Olof G. Alfvén | | | Institution: | Royal Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 1971 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1908 | | | Death Date: | 4/2/95 | | | | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. M. Ali Alpar | | | Institution: | Sabanci University; The Science Academy, Istanbul | | | Year Elected: | 2013 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1950 | | | | | | |
M. Ali Alpar is the founding president of the Science Academy, Istanbul, Turkey and Professor of Physics at Sabanci University. He has made important contributions in theoretical astrophysics, to our understanding of superfluid dynamics in neutron stars, to the evolution of millisecond pulsars. His current research focuses on neutron star glitches and on neutron star evolution with fallback disks. He is a member of the Academia Europaea. He was elected an international member of the American Philosophical Society in 2013. | |
| 4 | Name: | Prof. Edoardo Amaldi | | | Institution: | Universita "La Sapienza" | | | Year Elected: | 1961 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1908 | | | Death Date: | 12/6/89 | | | | |
| 5 | Name: | Dr. Eshel Ben-Jacob | | | Institution: | Tel Aviv University; Rice University | | | Year Elected: | 2014 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1952 | | | Death Date: | June 5, 2015 | | | | | | |
Eshel Ben-Jacob was a professor of Physics and Astronomy, Maguy-Glass Prof. in Physics of Complex Systems and Member of the Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University, Israel. He was also an Adjunct Prof. of Biosciences and Senior Investigator at the Center of Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) at Rice University. Prof. Ben-Jacob finished his PhD in Physics (1982) at Tel Aviv University, during which he investigated the nonlinear dynamics and noise effects in networks of superconductors. He spent three years (1981-1984) as a post doctoral fellow at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP; today KITP) at the University of California Santa Barbara and made his first groundbreaking work during that time. He and his collaborators solved the long standing "snowflake" problem, formulated by Kepler back in 1610, and lay the foundations of self-organization and pattern formation in open systems far from equilibrium - a field he pioneered and in which he made several breakthroughs (e.g., comprehending the singular interplay between the micro and macro level dynamics, formulating new self-consistent selection principles, founding a new theory of morphology selection). At the same time, Ben-Jacob suggested and showed, theoretically and experimentally, that Coulomb effect can be utilized to control single electron quantum tunneling in sub-micron systems. This led him to the invention (1988) of a transistor operating by single electron tunneling. He was awarded the Landau Prize for research in 1986. Ben-Jacob continued to study quantum effects in small systems, predicting (in the 90s) that flux solitons can behave as quantum relativistic particles.
Enthralled by the even greater challenge posed by self-organization in living systems, Ben-Jacob embarked on a new direction of applying physics principles and investigation methods to biology. His first and ongoing effort was bacterial colony development, believing that the foundations of cognition are rooted in these most fundamental life forms - in their abilities to assess the environment, process the information they sense, and adapt accordingly. Among his achievements in the last two decades in physical microbiology were revealing the principles of self organization in bacterial colonies and of collective decision making by social bacteria.
While continuing to work on bacteria, Ben-Jacob turned to apply what he learned there to studies of neural network organization and task performance. Here, his most noticeable accomplishment was the first imprinting of multiple memories in live neuronal networks outside the brain utilizing his new "functional holography" analysis of the network activity. Being recognized as a revolutionary step in Networks Neuroscience, this endeavor was selected by Scientific American as one of the 50 most important achievements in all fields of science and technology in 2007. Ben-Jacob then utilized the "functional holography" method for analyzing recorded human brain activity with application to epilepsy. He applied his methods in clinical studies of brain repair from stroke and traumatic brain injuries by hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
Ben-Jacob's last endeavor was applying what he learned from the microbial world in cancer research. Here he promoted the idea that cancer cells, like bacteria, use advanced communication and cooperation through which they migrate, colonize new organs, develop drug resistance, deceive the immune system and enslave stromal cells. In line of this paradigm, he worked on revealing the operational principles underlying these lethal traits and developing a new theoretical framework to studying new classes of therapeutic strategies intended to defeat cancer by means of "cyberwar", i.e. targeting its communication, cooperation and control.
Prof. Ben-Jacob served as vice president (1998-2001) and President (2001-2004) of the Israel Physical Society. He was granted the award of Cavaliere dell'Ordine della Stella della solidarietà Italiana for promotion of science and science culture (2008). He was awarded the Weizmann prize in Physical Sciences in 2013 for "innovative application of physical methods to the study of biological communities such as bacteria colonies, neural networks, and tumors" and inducted an International member of the American Philosophical Society in mathematical and physical sciences in 2014. He died on June 5, 2015, in Tel Aviv, Israel, at the age of 63. | |
| 6 | Name: | Professor Sir Michael Victor Berry | | | Institution: | University of Bristol | | | Year Elected: | 2021 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1941 | | | | | | |
Michael Berry is Melville Wills Professor of Physics (Emeritus) at the University of Bristol, UK, where he has been for more than twice as long he has not. He is a physicist, focusing on the physics of the mathematics...of the physics. Applications include the geometry of singularities (caustics on large scales, vortices on fine scales) in optics and other waves, connections between classical and quantum physics, and the physical asymptotics of divergent series. He delights in finding the arcane in the mundane - abstract and subtle concepts in familiar or dramatic phenomena:
*Singularities of smooth gradient maps in rainbows and tsunamis;
*The Laplace operator in oriental magic mirrors;
*Elliptic integrals in the polarization pattern of the clear blue sky;
*Geometry of twists and turns in quantum indistinguishability;
*Matrix degeneracies in overhead-projector transparencies;
*Gauss sums in the light beyond a humble diffraction grating. | |
| 7 | Name: | Dr. Aage Bohr | | | Institution: | University of Copenhagen | | | Year Elected: | 1965 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1922 | | | Death Date: | September 8, 2009 | | | | | | |
Born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1922, Aage Bohr is the son of Margrethe and Niels Bohr. Growing up among physicists like Wolfgang Pauli and Werner Heisenberg, he became a notable nuclear physicist in his own right. In 1946 he became an associate at the Niels Bohr Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen, ultimately serving as director of the institute from 1963-70. From 1950 Dr. Bohr worked closely with Ben Mottelson to develop the understanding of nuclear structure. They presented the status of the field in a monograph of two volumes. The first volume, Single-Particle Motion, appeared in 1969, and the second volume, Nuclear Deformations, in 1975. Their efforts on this project and their collaboration on nuclear theory led them to receive the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Leo James Rainwater, for research on the quantum mechanical description of nucleons orbiting inside a wobbly rotating droplet. Dr. Bohr was also the second recipient of the American Physical Society's Dannie Heinemann Prize for his investigations of the interaction of the nucleus with the electron shell and his contributions to the understanding of nuclear spectroscopy. Author of numerous articles in scientific journals, Dr. Bohr is a man of deep and broad interests. Having lived and worked in Denmark, Sweden, England and the United States, he currently holds an Emeritus position at the University of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute. | |
| 8 | Name: | Prof. Hendrik B. G. Casimir | | | Institution: | University of Leiden | | | Year Elected: | 1971 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1909 | | | Death Date: | May 4, 2000 | | | | |
| 9 | Name: | Dr. Jean Dalibard | | | Institution: | Collège de France | | | Year Elected: | 2018 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1958 | | | | | | |
Jean Dalibard was educated at Ecole normale supérieure in Paris, where he completed a Ph.D. in 1986 with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji. He worked at the French Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) for the first part of his carrier, before joining Collège de France in 2012 where he holds the chair Matter and Radiation. He has also been a Professor at Ecole polytechnique for more than 20 years.
Dalibard’s scientific work is concerned with atomic physics and optics, more specifically with the control of the motion of atoms with light. The starting point of this research field is quite paradoxical: by shining laser beams on a gas, it is possible to cool it to extremely low temperatures, less than a millionth of a degree above absolute zero. Such a low temperature can give rise to novel states of matter whose behavior, governed by Quantum Mechanics, is radically different from a normal fluid. Together with Cohen-Tannoudji, Dalibard contributed to the understanding of the mechanisms at the origin of this phenomenon, working notably on Sisyphus cooling and on the magneto-optical trap. Later, Dalibard and his team studied experimentally the properties of these gases when they are set in rotation, and they could observe the nucleation of a lattice of quantized vortices resulting from this circular motion. During the last decade, his research has been focused on the "physics of Flatland", i.e. the specific properties of a fluid when it is constrained to move only in a plane instead of the usual three-dimensional space. The long-term goal of his research is to develop cold atom setups that can emulate other physical systems that are yet poorly understood - in condensed matter physics for example - in order to bring experimental answers to important pending questions.
Jean Dalibard has received several awards, notably the Davisson-Germer Prize from the American Physical Society, the Max Born award from the Americal Physical Society and the Prix Jean Ricard form the French Physical Society. He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences, of the European Academy of Science, the Academia Europaea, and an international member of the US National Academy of Sciences. He has been a visiting scientist in a number of places outside France, notably NIST Gaithersburg and Cambridge University in the UK. | |
| 10 | Name: | Dr. Andrei D. Sakharov | | | Year Elected: | 1978 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1921 | | | Death Date: | 12/14/89 | | | | |
| 11 | Name: | Dr. Leo Esaki | | | Institution: | Tsukuba International Congress Center & University of Tsukuba | | | Year Elected: | 1991 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1925 | | | | | | |
Born in Osaka, Japan, physicist Leo Esaki has made many fundamental contributions pertaining to the physics of semiconductor materials. In his early work he demonstrated electron tunnelling in special semiconductor structures, which became known as tunnel or Esaki diodes. This work earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973. In 1960 Dr. Esaki joined the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, and became an IBM Fellow in 1967. More recently he helped establish the field of superlattice physics, creating a new class of artificial materials which display remarkable electronic properties. Known for his technical leadership and accomplishments, Dr. Esaki also possesses a strong interest in the interaction of science with societal issues on an international scale. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the National Academy of Science and the Japan Academy. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo in 1959 and has been awarded the Japanese Government Order of Culture and the American Physical Society's International Prize for New Material, among other honors. | |
| 12 | Name: | Dr. Fabiola Gianotti | | | Institution: | CERN | | | Year Elected: | 2019 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1960 | | | | | | |
Fabiola Gianotti is currently Director-General at CERN. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Milano in 1989.
As a Ph.D. student, Fabiola Gianotti worked on one of the first proton-antiproton collider experiments at CERN, the UA2 detector, which together with UA1, discovered the carriers of the weak force, the massive W and Z bosons. Next, Gianotti was involved in the ALEPH detector at the Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider at CERN, which made precision measurements establishing the Standard Model of Particle Physics. She was a leader in the design, building, and data analysis of ATLAS, one of the two detectors at the Large Hadron Collider, which announced in 2012 the discovery of the Higgs boson, the final piece in the Standard Model of Particle Physics. In 2016, she became the Director-General of CERN and is overseeing the operation and the upgrades of the world’s most complex and expensive science experiment, as well as being a leader in the design of the next global particle accelerator. Her research career is distinguished by her hardware skills (electronics on UA2 and liquid Argon calorimetry for LHC), software and analysis expertise (ATLAS), and leadership (ATLAS). In a field dominated by men for more than 100 years, Gianotti has established herself as the most influential high-energy physicist in the world today.
Among her awards are the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2013, the Enrico Fermi Prize of the Italian Physical Society in 2013, the Medal of Honour of the Niels Bohr Institute in 2013, and the Magellanic Premium of the American Philosophical Society in 2018. She is a member of the Italian Academy of Sciences (2012), the National Academy of Sciences (2015), French Academy of Science (2015), and Royal Society, 2018. Fabiola Gianotti was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019. | |
| 13 | Name: | Dr. Gerhard Herzberg | | | Institution: | Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences, National Research Council of Canada | | | Year Elected: | 1972 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1904 | | | Death Date: | 3/3/99 | | | | |
| 14 | Name: | Dr. Leon Van Hove | | | Year Elected: | 1980 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1924 | | | Death Date: | 9/2/1991 | | | | |
| 15 | Name: | Prof. Louis Leprince-Ringuet | | | Institution: | Collège de France | | | Year Elected: | 1967 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1901 | | | Death Date: | December 23, 2000 | | | | |
| 16 | Name: | Dr. Stig Lundqvist | | | Institution: | Chalmers Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 1985 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1925 | | | Death Date: | April 6, 2000 | | | | |
| 17 | Name: | 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. | |
| 18 | Name: | Dr. Ben R. Mottelson | | | Institution: | The Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen | | | Year Elected: | 2011 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1926 | | | Death Date: | May 13, 2022 | | | | | | |
Ben Mottelson is one of the giants of theoretical nuclear physics. With Aage Bohr, he discovered the connection between collective and single particle motion in atomic nuclei, thus establishing the modern framework for understanding the rich experimental behavior of nuclei. For this discovery, he, Bohr, and Rainwater received the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physics. The two volume study, Nuclear Structure, is the standard in the field. With Pines and Bohr, he pioneered the application of BCS theory of superconductivity to nuclei. He has been a major international figure, a founder and first director of the European Center for Nuclear Theory, and proponent of international cooperation - recognized by election to many nations’ scientific academies. He remains quite scientifically active, focusing on two new areas: man-made finite quantal systems (e.g., metallic clusters, quantum dots, and ultracold atomic clouds), which, as he has shown, can be fruitfully viewed as "artificial" nuclei; and reinterpretation of the foundations of quantum mechanics, where the central issue he grapples with is the role of fortuitousness in the theory. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1950 and was awarded the John Wetherill Medal in 1974. He is a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters (1958 - foreign, 1974 - (Danish), the National Academy of Sciences (1973), and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1971). He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2011. | |
| 19 | Name: | Dr. Giuseppe Occhialini | | | Institution: | University of Milan | | | Year Elected: | 1975 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1907 | | | Death Date: | 12/30/93 | | | | |
| 20 | Name: | Professor Giorgio Parisi | | | Institution: | Sapienza University of Rome I | | | Year Elected: | 2013 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 106. Physics | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1948 | | | | |
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