Happenings

Frank Press, noted geophysicist and former science adviser to President Carter, has been reelected to a second six-year term as president of the National Academy of Sciences. During his first term as president of the 15,000-member Academy, Press was credited with initiating several major science policy studies by the National Research Council and streamlining NRC's report-writing process. He has held faculty appointments at Columbia University, the California Institute ofTechnology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Peter H. Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden and Engelmann Professor of Botany at Washington University, has been elected home secretary of the Academy. Raven currently serves as chairman of the National Research Council's Committee on Research Opportunities in Biology. He will take on his new NAS post on July 1, succeeding two-term home secretary Bryce Crawford Jr., Re-gent's Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Minnesota. Also elected to the governing councii of the NAS were Mildred Dresseihaus, institute professor and professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Roald Hoffmann, John A. Newman Professor of Physical Science at Cornell University; Kurt J. Isselbacher, Mallinckrodt Professor of Medicine at Harvard University and chief of the gastrointestinal unit at Massachusetts General Hospital; and Phillip A. Sharp, professor and director of the MIT Center for Cancer Research. Willis H. Shapley last month accepted an appointment as NASA's Associate Deputy Administrator for Policy, a newly created post proposed by the NASA Management Study Group in January. As one of two Associate Deputy Administrators, the third ranking position at NASA, Shapley will serve as the principal adviser to Administrator James C. Fletcher and Deputy Administrator Dale Myers on policy and related matters. The other Associate Deputy Administrator, not yet appointed, will serve as an adviser on personnel, facilities and equipment. Shapley joined the Bureau of Budget in 1942 and specialized for 23 years in space programs, national defense, and research and development. He then moved to NASA as Associate Deputy Administrator in 1965, where he remained until his retirement in 1975. Since that time Shapley has served as a consultant to the NASA Administrator, the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Office of Technology Assessment and other organizations. Awards Bob Beale, science writer for the Sydney Morning Herald, received the third Michael Daley Award for his coverage of Australia's involvement in a 1986 Antarctic expedition. The $1,000 award for excellence in science and technology reporting is sponsored by the Australian Department of Science in association with the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science. Perry I. Adkisson has been selected to receive the 1987 Distinguished Service Award of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. Adkisson, Distinguished Professor of Entomology and Chancellor of the Texas A&M University System at College Station, is being honored for his leadership in developing the concept of integrated pest management and his years of service to agricultural science. The award will be presented at the AIBS annual meeting in August. The International Association for Dental Research presented nine annual Distinguished Scientist Awards at its 65th General Session last month: the Distinguished Scientist Award in Craniofacial Biology Research, presented for the first time this year, went to Coenraad F.A. Moorrees of Forsyth Dental Center in Boston. Gerrit Bevelander, professor emeritus at the University of Texas, received the Basic Research in Biological Mineralization Award. Henning Birkedal-Hansen was awarded the Basic Research in Periodontal Disease Award for his innovative work on collagen composition and enzymatic degradation. Birkedal-Hansen emigrated to the United States from Denmark in 1979 to join the faculty of the University of Alabama School of Dentistry. Jan Carisson, of the University of Umea in Sweden, was the recipient of the Research in Dental Caries Award. Louis W. Ripa of the State University of New York's School of Dental Medicine received the H. Trendley Dean Memorial Award, which recognizes outstanding research in epidemiology and dental caries. Bo Bergman, professor and chairman of the department of prosthetic dentistry at the Dental School in Umea Sweden, was awarded the Research in Prosthodontics Award. Leif M. Olgart received the Pulp Biology Research Award for outstanding contributions to pulp biology. Olgart is professor of endodontics at the University of Lund, Sweden. The Young Investigator Award went to Lawrence A. Tabak for his research on the regulation of mucin-glycoprotein syntheses in salivary glands. Ivar A. Mjor, director of the Scandinavian Institute of Dental Materials in Oslo, won the Wilmer Souder Award, which recognizes meritorious work in the field of dental materials research. Also presented at the IADR meeting was the first Gies Award for the best paper published in the Journal of Dental Research. The prize went to H.C. Margolis, E.C. Moreno and B.J. Murphy for their article on the effect of fluoride levels on enamel demineralization. The three researchers are from the Forsyth Dental Center in Boston. Irwin Fridovich, professor of biochemistry at Duke University, was recognized for his pioneering studies on the biological significance of oxygen radicals as recipient of the 1987 Passano Award, which includes an honorarium of $30,000. The Passano Foundation, a non-profit corporation devoted to the advancement of U.S. medical research, has presented this award annually since 1943. Jeremy Nathans of Stanford University was also honored by the Passano Foundation as winner of its 1987 Young Scientist Award. Nathans is being recognized for isolating the genes that specify the protein moieties of three different color-sensitive pigments in the human eye, thus demonstrating the molecular basis of red/green color blindness. The award includes a prize of $15,000. The National Academy of Sciences will recognize 16 outstanding contributors to science at an awards ceremony on April 27. Among the recipients: Brian A. Wandell, professor of psychology at Stanford University, and Laurence T. Maloney, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, will share the Troland Research Award in recognition of their studies on color perception. Wandell will be awarded $22,000 and Maloney will receive $10,000. The annual award was established in 1983 to honor outstanding experimental psychology research by young investigators. John Eddy will receive the Arctowski Medal for his studies on the relationship between sunspot activity and terrestrial weather. Eddy is director of the office for interdisciplinary earth studies at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. The medal, which includes a prize of $15,000, is awarded every three years for studies on solar activity and changes in the ionosphere and terrestrial atmosphere. Harmon Craig, professor of geochemistry and oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, has been named recipient of the Arthur L. Day Prize and Lectureship for his novel use of isotopes in studies on cosmochemistry, mantle geochemistry, oceanography and climatology. The award was established in 1970 to honor a scientist who has made new contributions to the understanding of the physics of the Earth. It includes a prize of $10,000 and an invitation to deliver four to six lectures at a single institution. Motoo Kimura, professor and head of the department of population genetics at the National Institute of Genetics, Japan, will receive the John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of Science. Kimura is being recognized for elucidating the relationship between molecular biology and evolutionary theory. The $15,000 award was established in 1930 through funds provided by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Andrew Herbert Knoll and Simon Conway Morris have been named winners of the Charles Doolittle Walcott Medal. The $2,000 award was established in 1934 and is presented every five years to honor outstanding contributions to the understanding of precambrian and Cambrian life and history. Knoll is a professor of biology at Harvard University and curator of the paleobotanical collections Harvard's Herbaria. Morris is with the University of Cambridge department of earth sciences. Yakov Zeldovich was awarded the Robertson Memorial Lecture of the NAS. Zeldovich, of Moscow University and the Institute for Physical Problems, Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, was selected for his contributions to the understanding of the astrophysical universe. The lecture is awarded every three years and carries a prize of $5,000 and an invitation to lecture on the recipient's work and its international aspects. Deaths Louis de Broglie, 94, a French physicist whose pioneering work in the 1920s contributed to the development of wave mechanics, died March 19 in Paris. Drawing on Einstein's proposal that light exhibits the properties of both waves and particles, de Broglie in 1923 hypothesized that particular matter, such as electrons, might also exhibit wavelike properties. His theory was experimentally confirmed by others in 1927 and de Broglie won the 1929 Nobel Prize in physics for his work. De Broglie studied at the Lyceé Janson-deSaffly in Paris and received a bachelor's degree in history and a doctoral in science from Sobornne. In 1928 he was named professor of theoretical physics at the Henri Poincaré Institute and there he founded the Center of Studies in Applied Mathematics in 1943. De Broglie was a member of the French Academy of Sciences and served as its permanent secretary from 1942 to 1975. He and his brother Maurice, also a physicist, were appointed advisers to the French Atomic Energy Commission in 1943. W. Sterling Cole, the first director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, died of cancer on March 15 in Washington, D.C. He was 82 years old. From 1935 to 1957 Cole served as a Republican representative from New York in the House of Representatives. He was named to the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy when it was formed in 1946 and was appointed its chairman in 1953. During that time he became an expert on atomic energy and nuclear weaponry and an advocate of the peaceful use of nuclear power. Cole resigned from Congress in 1957 to serve a four-year term as director general of the new IAEA in Vienna, which was established to implement President Eisenhower's "atoms-for-peace" proposals. He later returned to Washington and served as a federal representative on the Southern Interstate Nuclear Board from 1969 to 1981. New Publications Reassessing Nuclear Power: The Fallout From Chernobyi, World-watch Paper 75, discusses the accident's impact on national nuclear power policies and covers the Soviet accident report and its political implications. Written by Christopher Flavin, the report is based in part on September's meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency and interviews with nuclear experts in six European countries. The cost is $4. For more in-formation contact: Woridwatch Institute, 1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20036. (202) 452-1999. The AIDS & Public Policy Journal analyzes the controversial issues surrounding the AIDS epidemic from the perspective of a variety of disciplines, including law, business, medicine, public health and public policy. The quarterly journal is edited by Robert F. Hummel, deputy director of the AIDS Institute, New York State Department of Health, and Ronald Bayer, associate for policy studies at The Hastings Center and co-director of the AIDS, Public Health and Civil Liberties Project. The annual subscription rate is $55 for individuals and $95 for institutions. Contact: University Publishing Group, 107 East Church St., Frederick, MD 21701. (301) 694-8531. (800) 654-8188. Science Archive Born in Chicago on April 6, 1928, the precocious son of James Dewey and Jean Mitchell, Watson was an avid bird watcher as a teenager. While studying zoology at the University of Chicago, the 15-year-old boy strenuously avoided the physics and chemistry departments, concentrating instead on evolution and, by his senior year, genetics. When time came to consider graduate study, he inquired about ornithology programs at Indiana University; although the school had no such specialty, he enrolled at age 19. It was there that James D. Watson's interest in birds waned and was replaced by a desire to uncover the physical nature of the gene. Shortly before winning the 1962 Nobel Prize (shared with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins) for determining the structure of DNA, Watson said of his bIrdwatching days, it's "a pleasant way to get some science when you're young, but not as an adult."

Happenings

The Scientist Staff

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