Happenings

Robert M. White has been reelected to a second four-year term as president of the National Academy of Engineering. Before being elected president of the 1,300-member academy in 1983, White served as president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a consortium of 50 universities with research programs in atmospheric sciences and technology. White is a recognized expert in meteorology and oceanography and served as the first administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from 1970 to 1977.

Re-elected to three-year terms on the NAE governing council were H. Norman Abramson, executive vice resident, Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas; Gerald P. Dinneen, vice president of science and technology at Honeywell Inc.; and Paul E. Gray, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ray Epstein, associate director of the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Re-search Center at Brandeis University, will move to Woods Hole, Mass., in June as associate director of the Marine Biological Laboratory. Epstein has been with the Rosenstiel Center since its inception in 1971, serving as assistant director for 15 years before being named associate director. In September Epstein will be reunited with his current associate, Harlyn Halvorson, director of the Rosenstiel Center, when Halvorson takes over as director of MBL. Epstein and Halvorson have collaborated since the mid-1960s, first at the University of Wisconsin and later at Rosenstiel.

David L. Belden has been named executive director of the 117,000-member American Society of Mechanical Engineers. For the past 11 years Belden served as executive director and secretary of the Institute of Industrial Engineers. He takes on his new post in June, succeeding Paul F. Alimendinger, who is retiring after six years in office.

Eugene F. Woods, former director of biology and infectious diseases at Baxter Travenol Laboratories, has joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Chicago as head of the department of pharmacodynamics and director of the clinical pharmacokinetics laboratory. Woods had been with Baxter Travenol for 11 years; prior to that he was a professor of pharmacology specializing in cardiovascular research at the Medical University of South Carolina from 1957 to 1975. Brian Keith Follett, professor and head of the department of zoology in the University of Bristol, was elected a member of the Royal Society Council and secretary for the biological sciences. He takes office August 1, succeeding Sir David Smith, Sibthorpian Professor of Rural Economy in the University of Oxford.

David Allen Rees, director of the National Institute for Medical Research of the U.K. Medical Re-search Council, has been appointed secretary of the MRC. Rees, currently a visiting professor in the Department of Biophysics at King's College, London, has been associated with the MRC since 1980 as an associate director of the Cell Biophysics Unit at King's College. He then moved to the Council's NIMR division in 1982. Rees will assume office on October 1, succeeding Sir James Gowans, secretary of the Council for the past 10 years.

Min Chueh Chang, principal scientist at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, was presented the Award for Scientific Merit by the Fifth World Congress on In Vitro Fertilization and Embryo Transfer and the Ortho Pharmaceutical Corporation for his scientific contributions to the areas of reproduction, IVF, ET and contraception. Chang also holds the position of Adjunct Professor of Reproduction Biology at Boston University. He was recognized by the Congress for his work in the 1950s on the experimental basis for the use of progesterone in oral contraceptives and for his pioneering work with laboratory animals' sperm capacitation and in vitro fertilization. The Award is presented for the first time in 1987.

James Van Allen has been named recipient of Sigma Xi's 1987 William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement, to be presented during the Society's annual meeting in October. Van Allen designed many of the scientific instruments used on early U.S. satellites, some of which in 1958 detected the radiation belts named in his honor. Currently Carver Professor of Physics Emeritus at the University of Iowa, Van Allen has received numerous scientific honors, including the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society and the first AAAS-Philip Hauge Abelson Prize.

Shiyamalie R. Ruberu and Thomas W. Panunto, students at the University of Minnesota, were awarded the Pauling Prize of the American Crystallographic Association for the best student paper presented at the ACA annual meeting. Ruberu and Panunto are pupils of assistant professor of chemistry, Margaret Etter. They were recognized for their paper entitled "Physical and Chemical Properties of Cyclamers."

Richard P. Laeser, former project manager for the Voyager Space Project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, received the Nelson P. Jackson Aerospace Award of the National Space Club. The award, presented annually, recognizes outstanding achievements in missile, space or aircraft science.

Stanley B. Prusiner received the American Academy of Neurology's annual Cotzias Award for outstanding research at the Academy's annual meeting last month. Prusiner's studies of scrapie, a degenerative brain disease of sheep and goats, led him to conclude that the infectious agent, which he dubbed a prion, consisted primarily of protein. Prusiner is a professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco.

Robert W. Lucky, executive director of the Communication Sciences Research Division of AT&T Bell Labs, received the Marconi International Fellowship Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to communication. Lucky is being recognized for his invention of the automatically adaptive equalizer. The award, established in 1974 on the centennial of Guglielmo Marconi's birth, includes a grant of $35,000.

Michael A. Isnardi of the David Sarnoff Research Center has been named recipient of the Marconi Young Scientist Award, which honors promising researchers who have made significant scientific advances in the field of communications by the age of 27—the age at which Marconi made his first transAtlantic wireless transmission. Isnardi, 26, developed a transmitter and receiver system to increase the information transmitted within a television channel.

Primo Levi, chemist and author of "The Periodic Table" and other autobiographical accounts of his survival in Auschwitz, died April 11 in Rome, an apparent suicide. He was 67 years old. Levi received his chemistry degree from the University of Turin in 1941, working at a pharmaceutical laboratory in Milan until 1943, when he joined the Italian Partisans and was eventually imprisoned at the Monowitz Auschwitz camp. He recorded his experiences in the Nazi camps in such books as "Survival in Auschwitz" and "The Reawakening." A winner of several literary awards, including the prestigious Italian Strega Prize, Levi continued to pursue his interest in chemistry, working for nearly 30 years at a Turin paint factory, where he was a general manager from 1961 to 1974.

John G. Ferris, 73, former senior research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, died March 26 in Washington, D.C. Ferris was a 42-year veteran of the Geological Survey, joining its ranks in 1938 as a hydrologist on ground water projects in New York, Connecticut, Indiana and Michigan. In 1957 he was assigned to the Washington area as ground water branch consultant and senior research scientist. He then moved to the University of Arizona in 1967 and returned to Washington six years later, remaining in the area until after his retirement in 1980.

David Adler, professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology known for his studies of semiconductors, died March 31 in Lexington, Mass. He was 51 years old. Adler had been with MIT since 1965, first as a research associate and later as a faculty member in 1967. Prior to that he was a research associate at the U.K. Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell. Adler was also a regional editor of "The Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids" and an associate editor of the "Materials Research Bulletin."

To honor the centenary of the Pasteur institute in Paris, the French postal service has issued a series of commemorative stamps (below) depicting six influential researchers in the life sciences: Charles Richet, discoverer of anaphylaxis; Alexandre Yersin, discoverer of the plague bacillus; Eugene Jamot, specialist in trypanosomiasis; Jean Rostand, geneticist who worked on parthenogenesis and teratology; Bernard Halpern, immunologist who worked on sulfamides and neuroleptics; and Jacques Monod, biochemist-geneticist who described the biochemical steps involved in protein synthesis within a cell and shared the 1965 Nobel Prize with François Jacob and André Lwoff.

Grants for Research and Education in Science and Engineering, a brochure from the National Science Foundation, offers guidance for preparing unsolicited proposals to the Foundation. Included is information on continued grant support, a listing of special programs offered by NSF, and a checklist for proposal submission. This publication supersedes NSF's brochure Grants for Scientific and Engineering Research. There is no charge for the booklet. Contact: Forms and Publications, NSF, Washington, DC 20550; (202) 357-7861.

Oncogene: An International Journal presents research papers on the molecular basis of malignant change, including such topics as activation mechanisms of cellular oncogenes, oncogenes in RNA and DNA tumor viruses, and cellular senescence. The second issue of the journal is scheduled for release this month. Subscription price for four issues is £45 in the United Kingdom and $95 in the United States and Canada. For more information, contact: Macmillan Journals Limited, Farndon Road, Market Harborough, Leicestershire LE16 9NR, UK.