May 2013 • Vol
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May 2013 • Vol. 22, No. 5 Nominees Sought for Nicholson Medal A PUBLICATION OF THE AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY page 7 WWW.APS.ORG/PUBLICATIONS/APSNEWS AIP Reorganizes its Publishing Operations Brinkman Looks Back on Good Science and Tough Decisions By Michael Lucibella ily of journals, including Physical William F. Brinkman stepped actor] forward very successfully, science came out of things like In February, the American In- Review Letters, Physical Review down last month as the Director of we moved the free electron laser the biofuel centers and the EFRCs stitute of Physics established a X and Reviews of Modern Physics, the Office of Science in the U.S. to completion and it’s working. [Energy Frontier Research Cen- new wholly owned, but manageri- whereas AIP publishes a portfo- Department of Energy, the leading Those were very important ac- ters] I think they were very inno- ally independent, limited liability lio of 17 journals, many of which funder of physical science in the complishments. NSLS II [Nation- vative and have produced a lot of company to oversee publishing all concentrate on applied areas of federal government. He had held very good science, whether it was of its research journals. The move physics, as well as journals of sev- this post since June of 2009, prior on lignins [an organic compound comes amidst a broader restructur- eral of its member societies. to which he was a Senior Research that could be a renewable fuel ing effort by AIP to modernize its Several APS divisions and Physicist at Princeton, and before source] or on breaking down cel- governance, and better respond to topical groups correspond closely that Vice President for Research at lulose and that kind of thing, but the changing publishing market. with areas covered by AIP jour- Bell Laboratories. He also served also on new types of solar cells “The AIP gets nearly all of its nals, including The Journal of as APS President in 2002. with silicon pillars. A lot of good funding from publishing,” said Chemical Physics, Physics of Flu- As he left office, Brinkman science came out and I feel pret- Fred Dylla, the Executive Director ids, Physics of Plasmas, and Re- took time to share some thoughts ty good about that. In addition, of AIP. “It’s very important that view of Scientific Instruments. AIP with Michael Lucibella of APS we’ve managed to build as good a the publishing be run as efficiently also publishes Journal of Applied News. staff as we’ve had in a long time. as possible.” Physics and Applied Physics Let- What can you say were the So I’m very pleased with that too, AIP is an umbrella organiza- ters. highlights of your tenure as the I think the people that I am leav- tion, whose members are other The newly formed AIP Pub- Director of the Office of Science? ing behind are very good. societies, among the largest of lishing LLC is designed to be Well, several things. I think we How has the Office of Sci- which is APS. APS is the pub- leaner and more adaptable. “Pub- moved ITER [the International al Synchrotron Light Source II] ence changed under your watch? Thermonuclear Experimental Re- is moving forward. A lot of good lisher of the Physical Review fam- AIP continued on page 6 BRINKMAN continued on page 6 APS Launches New Prize and New Award March & April Meeting Attendees Flock to Annual PhysTEC Conference Talks Online By Bushraa Khatib cal year in which he taught phys- With Nominations Due by July First Full video capture of two major ses- This year’s annual conference ics in a New York City public high sions at the March Meeting has school. He described his transition This year APS is launching the Also debuting this year is the been posted on the APS website. of the Physics Teacher Education Herman Feshbach Prize, named Reichert Award for Excellence Both the Kavli Foundation Session: Coalition (PhysTEC) was held from introductory college phys- for a leading nuclear theorist who in Advanced Laboratory Instruc- Physics for Real World Problems, March 16-17 in Baltimore, Mary- ics instructor to teacher educa- enjoyed a long and distinguished tion. The addition of this Award and the Nobel Prize Session fea- land as a satellite meeting of the tion program participant, which turing talks by David Wineland and career at MIT. The Feshbach Prize to the APS portfolio is designed annual APS March Meeting. Over involved taking courses that he Serge Haroche can be accessed at himself had previously taught, and in nuclear theory will complement to recognize outstanding achieve- http://www.aps.org/meetings/march/ 75 universities and colleges were shared both frustrating and posi- the Tom W. Bonner Prize, given ment in teaching, sustaining and index.cfm. At the same site there represented by 119 attendees. are also interviews, special features tive experiences with his students. primarily for nuclear experimen- enhancing an advanced under- The conference began with an tal physics. and live coverage of the meeting, opening plenary by Richard Stein- Steinberg said his experiences as a graduate laboratory course or produced by APS-TV. Nominations for the first cycle high school teacher give him more courses. The Award was estab- berg, Program Director of Science of the Prize are currently being Education at City College of New credibility as a professor, and re- lished through the generosity of Video from the April Meeting, in- sought. They can be submitted cluding all the plenary sessions, is York. Steinberg, a professor of inforce his methods of teaching Jonathan Reichert and Barbara online at http://www.aps.org/pro- also available at http://www.aps.org/ physics and education, presented physics by inquiry. grams/honors/prizes/feshbach. Wolff-Reichert, for whom the meetings/april/index.cfm. his experiences during a sabbati- PhysTEC continued on page 6 cfm. The nomination deadline is development of advanced labora- July 1; the first recipient(s) will be tory instruction has been a long- determined by the APS Executive time passion. More information March Meeting Prize and Award Recipients Board in September upon recom- about the Award, and instructions mendation of the selection com- for submitting nominations, can mittee, and the first Prize will be be found at http://www.aps.org/ presented at the 2014 April Meet- programs/honors/awards/lab.cfm. ing in Savannah. The nomination deadline is July 1. Parsing the Data About Women in Physics By Calla Cofield in STEM compared to their male At a press conference at the colleagues. APS March Meeting, Louis Ama- Researchers at Northwestern ral from Northwestern University University and Universitat Rovira presented results from a paper in i Virgili in Catalonia, Spain decid- which he and colleagues care- ed to ask the more dynamic ques- fully examine what factors may tion of whether or not male scien- influence publication rates among tists were actually outperforming women in STEM fields. Roxanne their female counterparts. Their Hughes of the National High Mag- results were published in Decem- netic Field Laboratory presented ber 2012 in the journal PLoS One. results from her study of the ef- The team created an equation for Photo by Ken Cole publication rate that incorporated fectiveness of a program targeted At the ceremonial session at the March Meeting in Baltimore, APS President Michael Turner presented prizes and variables such as the stage the at providing more opportunities to awards to 26 individuals; in addition, one award was presented by the American Institute of Physics (AIP). After the person is at in his/her career, and female physics undergraduates. ceremony, the recipients gathered for a group photo; three who unfortunately could not attend are pictured in the insets. Women Publish Less Than the number of publications from In the photo, front row (l to r): Timothy Sanchez, Wilson Ho, Daniel Fisher, Costas Soukoulis, John Pendry, David Smith, Men the entire field or discipline in that Luc Berger, James Chelikowsky, John Slonczewski. Middle row (l to r): Mark Pinto, Brooks Pate, Jean-Luc Brédas, Rob- A simple count of publica- year. ert Birgeneau (AIP), Mario Affatigato, Daniel Neumark, Tetsuji Miwa, Michio Jimbo, Margaret Geller, David Yllanes. Back tion numbers by gender shows They also considered that some row (l to r): John Woollam, Mahesh Mahanthappa, Stephen Cheng, Nergis Mavalvala, David McClelland, APS President fewer publications from women DATA continued on page 4 Michael Turner. Insets (l to r): Yuliya Dovzhenko, Geraldine Richmond, Roman Schnabel. 2 • May 2013 Members This Month in Physics History in the Media May 11, 1962: Feynman’s “Brownian Ratchet” “It is the consensus of the Voy- treme situations such as riots and n 1948, Sir Arthur Eddington famously de- 11, 1962, Feynman described a “Brownian ratch- ager science team that Voyager 1 protests and escape panic.” Iscribed the second law of thermodynamics as et” device based on earlier work in 1912, by a has not yet left the solar system Matthew Bierbaum, Cornell, holding “the supreme position among the laws Polish physicist named Marian Smoluchowski. or reached interstellar space… In on the physics of mosh pits, Na- of nature,” lamenting that if one devised a theory Smoluchowski proposed a machine capable of December 2012, the Voyager sci- tional Public Radio, March 22, found to violate that second law, “There is nothing extracting useful work from heat in a system at ence team reported that Voyager 1 2013. for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.” That thermal equilibrium. It features a small paddle is within a new region called ‘the hasn’t kept physicists from proposing the occa- wheel immersed in a fluid and a ratchet connected sional speculative thought experiment on how one by an axle.