American Philosophical Society
Member History

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Resident[X]
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. 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.
 
3Name:  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]