University of Maryland Physics Professor Sylvester James Gates, Jr. is one of 84 U.S. researchers and 21 foreign associates newly elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

Election to the academy is considered one of the highest honors that can be accorded a U.S. scientist or engineer. It is the latest honor in an extraordinary year for Gates. In January, he was named a University System of Maryland Regents Professor, and in February President Obama awarded him the National Medal of Science in a White House ceremony.

That award cited Dr. Gates’ “contributions to the mathematics of supersymmetry in particle, field, and string theories and extraordinary efforts to engage the public on the beauty and wonder of fundamental physics.”

Gates’ induction will bring to 22 the number of past and present University of Maryland, College Park faculty who have been elected to the NAS. A total of 50 past and present faculty are members of the National Academies, which is comprised of the NAS, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine.

Gates is known for his work in supersymmetry and supergravity, areas closely related to superstring theory, which seeks to describe the fundamental matter of the universe and is sometimes referred to as a “theory of everything.” He is the John S.Toll Professor of Physics and director of the Center for String and Particle Theory. He has been featured frequently on the PBS television program NOVA as an expert on physics, and has completed a DVD of 24 half-hour lectures that make the complexities of theoretical physics understandable to laypeople.

“Jim Gates’ contributions to theoretical physics are shaping the way a generation of scientists think about and study the nature of the universe,” said Jayanth Banavar, dean of the university’s College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences. “This latest honor, along with the many others he has received this year and throughout his career, recognize the ground-breaking quality of his work. We congratulate him and we are extraordinarily proud of him.”

UMD researchers, including Drew Baden, Alberto Belloni, Sarah Eno, Nick Hadley and Andris Skuja, coauthored the CMS Higgs discovery paper, "Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC." In less than a year, this seminal paper has garnered more than 1000 citations of SPIRES.

The High-Altitude Water Cherenkov observatory (HAWC) gamma-ray telescope recently captured its first image. To read BBC News' article on the HAWC Collaboration, visit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22149161

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