Nobelist Andre Geim to Receive 2012 Prange Prize

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Published: Friday, September 14 2012 01:00

Condensed Matter Lecture Set for Oct. 16 at UMD

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Nobel Laureate Andre Geim of the University of Manchester, UK, has been named the 2012 recipient of the Richard E. Prange Prize and Lectureship in Condensed Matter Theory and Related Areas. Dr. Geim will receive a $10,000 honorarium and deliver a public presentation entitled "Random Walk to Graphene” at the University of Maryland, College Park, on Oct. 16, 2012. He was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics with Konstantin Novoselov “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene”. Graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice, exhibits tremendous stability, strength and electrical conductivity. Geim and Novoselov isolated the substance by using Scotch tape to peel it from graphite.

The Prange Prize, established by the UMD Department of Physics and Condensed Matter Theory Center (CMTC), honors the late Professor Richard E. Prange, whose distinguished professorial career at Maryland spanned four decades (1961-2000). The Prange Prize is made possible by a gift from Dr. Prange's wife, Dr. Madeleine Joullié, a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania

Born in Sochi, Russia, Dr. Geim did his undergraduate work at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (Phystech) and received his doctorate at the Institute of Solid State Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. After appointments in the UK, Denmark and the Netherlands, he accepted a position as a professor of physics at the University of Manchester in 2001. In addition to his Nobel Prize, he has received the Mott, Europhysics and Korber prizes, the John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of Science from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society. He currently holds the Langworthy and Royal Society 2010 Anniversary Research professorships at Manchester and directs its Centre for Meso-science and Nanotechnology. His Prange Prize lecture will be delivered at the University of Maryland's John S. Toll Physics Building at 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 16 in the Lecture Hall, Room 1412. The event is open to the public.  Dr. Geim will also present a seminar entitled “Beyond Graphene” on Monday October 15 at 2pm in Room 1201 in the Maryland physics department.

While pursuing his doctorate at the University of Chicago, Richard Prange worked with Nobelist Yoichiro Nambu, among others. At the University of Maryland, he edited a highly-respected book on the quantum Hall effect and made important theoretical contributions to the subject. His interests extended into all aspects of theoretical physics, and continued after his retirement.  Dr. Prange was a member of the Maryland condensed matter theory group for more than 40 years and was an affiliate of CMTC since its inception in 2002.

"Richard spent the very last afternoon of his life in the physics lecture hall for a colloquium on graphene,” said Dr. Joullié. "Afterward, he enjoyed a vigorous discussion on the topic. And so Andre Geim’s discussion of graphene could not be a better fit for the Prange Prize.”

"The Prange Prize provides a unique opportunity to acknowledge transformative work in condensed-matter theory, a field that has proven to be an inexhaustible source of insights and discoveries in both fundamental and applied physics,” said Dr. Sankar Das Sarma, who holds the Richard E. Prange Chair in Physics at UMD and is also a Distinguished University Professor and Director of the CMTC.

Since its initiation in 2009, the Prange Prize has been awarded to Nobelists Philip W. Anderson, Walter Kohn and Daniel Tsui.

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Jacob Taylor Wins a Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal

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Published: Thursday, September 13 2012 11:24

Jacob Taylor, a fellow at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), was named one of nine winners of this year’s Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals, also called “Sammies.” The medals, sometimes referred to as the “Oscars” of government service, will be presented by the non-profit Partnership for Public Service at a ceremony in Washington, DC on September 13.

The Partnership describes the Sammies this way: “The Service to America Medals are a powerful illustration of the good that government does, which positively affects our lives every day,” said Max Stier, Partnership for Public Service president and CEO. “We will never get what we want out of our government if we focus solely on its shortcomings and fail to celebrate its successes.”

Taylor will receive the Call to Service Medal. His citation mentions that he “has made pioneering scientific discoveries that in time could lead to significant advances in health care, communications, computing and technology.”

More information can be obtained at servicetoamericamedals.org

Hassan Jawahery Named Distinguished University Professor

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Published: Wednesday, September 12 2012 14:48

Dr. Hassan Jawahery, the Gus T. Zorn Professor of Physics, has been named a Distinguished University Professor. This designation is the campus’ highest academic honor, reserved for those whose scholarly achievements “have brought distinction to the University of Maryland.” It recognizes Jawahery’s efforts in precision measurements of the properties and interactions of subatomic particles, part of the quest to solve fundamental puzzles such as the matter/anti-matter asymmetry in the Universe.

After graduating from Tehran University in 1976, Jawahery moved to Tufts University and received his Ph.D. in 1981. He accepted postdoctoral and research assistant professor appointments at Syracuse University and was named the physics coordinator of the CLEO particle experiment (1987-1988) based at Cornell. In 1987, he joined the University of Maryland, and worked on the Omni-Purpose Apparatus (OPAL) experiment at CERN’s Large Electron-Positron collider (LEP).

Jawahery was one of the founding members of the celebrated BaBar particle physics experiment, designed, built and operated by an international collaboration of over 600 physicists from 10 countries at the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC). He served as the physics analysis coordinator of the experiment (2001-2002), and for two years (2006-2008) served as BaBar “spokesperson,” a role combining the functions of chief scientist and CEO. BaBar observed a process that violates matter/anti-matter symmetry (and consequently time-reversal symmetry), and the effect was substantial: in 2008, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Kobayashi and Maskawa, whose 1973 prediction of broken symmetry in the framework of the Standard Model initiated the thirty-year experimental verification effort finally achieved by BaBar and a competing experiment in Japan.

Recently, Jawahery has been playing a leading role in the development of future experiments, such as the Super-B experiment at the Frascati Lab near Rome. The aim is to increase the production of bottom/anti-bottom quarks by several orders of magnitude over that produced at SLAC, which will allow for precision measurements that may reveal evidence for new physics, in synergy with the current efforts at CERN’S LHC supercollider.

Jawahery is the Associate Editor of the Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science, the field’s most prestigious journal for summary publications. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2004 and the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2010.

Jawahery will be recognized at the University of Maryland’s 29th Annual Faculty and Staff Convocation on Tuesday, October 9 at 3:00 p.m. in the Memorial Chapel.

Redish to be Awarded 2013 Oersted Medal

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Published: Friday, August 31 2012 11:11

Edward (Joe) Redish will be awarded the 2013 Oersted Medal from the American Association of Physics Teachers, at their national meeting in New Orleans, next January. This prestigious medal recognizes those who have had an outstanding, widespread and lasting impact on the teaching of physics.

Professor Redish joined the department in 1968 after receiving his Ph.D. in theoretical nuclear physics from MIT. For the past 20 years his research effort has focused on physics education with an emphasis on the role of student expectations and understanding the kinds of difficulties physics students have with problem solving from introductory to upper division physics. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the AAAS, and the Washington Academy of Science and has received awards for his work in education from the Washington Academy of Science, the Maryland Association for Higher Education, Dickinson College, Vanderbilt University, and the Robert A. Millikan Medal from the AAPT. 

Johnpierre Paglione Awarded the 2012 Richard A. Ferrell Distinguished Faculty Fellowship

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Published: Friday, August 31 2012 11:09

Assistant Professor Johnpierre Paglione has received the 2012 Richard A. Ferrell Distinguished Faculty Fellowship, which recognizes outstanding personal effort and expertise in physics as well as dedicated service to the UMD Department of Physics. The Fellowship, established in 2001, honors Dr. Richard A. Ferrell, a deeply-respected physicist who joined the University in 1953, served 40 years, and remained active in the department even after his retirement. Dr. Ferrell died in 2005 at his nearby University Park home.

Professor Paglione is a condensed matter experimentalist and a member of the Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials (CNAM). His research interests include cuprate and iron-based superconductivity and magnetism, quantum criticality and strongly correlated electron phenomena, and the new field of topological insulator research. He will give a physics colloquium on September 18 at 4 pm in room 1410 entitled Quantum Materials: From Superconductors to Insulators... and Back!