Happenings

Harlyn 0. Halvorson, professor of biology and director of the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center at Brandeis University, has been elected president and director of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. In 1962 Halvorson taught the summer physiology course at MBL and served as an instructor there through 1967. Since that time he has been an MBL summer investigator. Halvorson has taught at several universities, including the University of Michigan Medical School, the University of Washington, the University of Wisconsin and Hebrew University. He had an NIH career professorship from 1963 until 1971, when he joined the staff of Brandeis University. The previous president and director of MBL, Paul R. Gross, left the office last fall to become vice president of the University of Virginia. Halvorson's appointment as MBL president began last month and he will become director of the lab at the end of August, replacing J. Richard Wittaker who has been director pro tern since October. Mitchell Jay Feigenbaum, known for his work in chaotic dynamics, has been appointed a professor at The Rockefeller University. Feigenbaurn most recently was a professor in the Department of Physics and the Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics at Cornell University. Before that he was associated with Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1974 to 1982. In 1982 Feigenbaum received the Ernest 0. Lawrence Award of the U.S. Department of Energy and in 1984 he was presented the MacArthur Foundation Award. Robert F. Lucey has been named Cornell University's first E.V. Baker Professor of Agriculture. The professorship was established by the university's board of trustees in honor of E. Vreeland Baker, a 1923 graduate who died in 1985, leaving his estate to Cornell. Lucey has directed Cornell's Northern New York Agricultural Development Program since its inception in 1961 and chaired Cornell's Department of Agronomy for the past 10 years. AWARDS Max F. Perutz and John C. Kendrew were presented the 1987 Distinguished Service Award of the Miami Winter Symposium in honor of their contributions toward promoting international cooperation between biological scientists. In particular, Perutz and Kendrew were cited for their support of the founding and growth of the European Molecular Biology Organization, now in its 24th year. In 1962 Perutz and Kendrew together received the Nobel Prize in medicine, Perutz for his work on determining the 3-dimensional structure of hemoglobin through X-ray diffraction and Kendrew for doing the same with myoglobin. Kurt Mislow will receive the Nichols Award of the American Chemical Society's New York Section on March 27. The award is intended to "stimulate original research in chemistry," and consists of a gold medal. Mislow, currently the Hugh Stott Taylor Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University, studied under Linus Pauling at the California Institute of Technology, where he received his doctorate in 1947. He then moved to New York University as an assistant professor and joined the staff of Princeton in 1964. Robert Altemeyer, associate professor of psychology at the University of Manitoba, Canada, received the AAAS Behavioral Science Research Prize for his paper entitled "Authoritarian Aggression." The annual award, formerly called the AAAS SocioPsychological Prize, honors meritorious essays that promote understanding of human psychological, social or cultural behavior and includes an award of $1,000. Pedro Cuatrecasas and Meir Wilchek have been chosen to receive the Wolf Foundation Prize for medicine, Israel's top scientific honor. Cuatrecasas is senior vice-president for research and development at Glaxo, Inc., Research Triangle Park, N.C., and Wilchek is a biochemist at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. The scientists are being recognized for their work in affinity chromatography and will share the $100,000 award. Francisco J. Ayala, Norman D. Newell and Stanley L. Weinberg received the 1987 Scientffic Freedom and Responsibility Award of the AAAS at the Association's annual meeting last month. They are being honored for their individual roles in promoting the scientific theory of evolution. Ayala, professor of genetics at the University of California, Davis, is being recognized for "speaking out forcefully on the scientific basis for the theory of evolution." Newell, curator emeritus of the Department of Invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, was one of the first to alert scientists and the public to the "threats creationism poses to academic freedom and scientific education." Weinberg, a retired high school biology teacher and first president of the National Center for Science Education, is being honored for countering creationist attempts to influence textbook decisions and the teaching of evolution. Jeremy Bernstein and Sir David Attenborough were among five winners of the Britannica Awards, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the "communications of knowledge." Bernstein is a theoretical physicist and a staff writer for The New Yorker and Attenborough is a writer, naturalist and former BBC executive who has produced such television series as "Life on Earth" and "The Living Planet." The awards, which consist of a gold medal and a prize of $15,000, were established last year by Encyclopaedia Britannica. Conard Dahn, an astronomer at the Flagstaff Station of the U.S. Naval Observatory, received the 1986 Simon Newcomb Award in Science last month "for managing the world's most successful and innovative stellar parallax program." The Newcomb award recognizes individuals who have made out-standing contributions to a specific research effort at the Naval Observatory. Leroy Doggett and Gail Cleere accepted the Naval Observatory's Captain James M. Gillis Award for Outstanding Service last month. Doggett is being honored for his outstanding contributions as editor of the Nautical, Astronomical and Air Almanacs and Astronomical Phenomena, published by the Naval Observatory in collaboration with Her Majesty's Nautical Almanac Office. Doggett is also associate editor of the quarterly journal Archeoastronomy. Cleere is public affairs specialist for the Naval Observatory and is being recognized for her innovative public information program, including her monthly astronomy newsletter and last year's successful "Comet Halley Hotline." The Institute of Physics of the United Kingdom has announced the following recipients of its 1987 awards: Andrew C. Carter, senior group leader at Plessey Research Caswell, was awarded the Paterson Medal and Prize for his contributions to the development of optoelectronic devices. Sir Sam Edwards of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge received the Guthrie Medal and Prize for his contributions to theoretical solid state physics. Brian H. Flowers received the Glazebrook Medal and Prize for his leadership in the support of scientific and technological research. Lord Flowers is vice-chancellor of the University of London and is a Fellow of the Royal Society. Michael B. Green of the Department of Physics at Queen Mary College, London, received the Maxwell Medal and Prize for his outstanding contributions to supersymmetric string theories. Stephen Hawking, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, was awarded the Paul Dirac Medal and Prize for his many distinguished contributions to cosmological theory. Cyril Hilsum, director of research at GEC and visiting professor of applied physics at the University of Durham, was presented the Max Born Medal and Prize for his studies on semiconductor compounds and infrared and microwave devices. Hilsum is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a fellow of the University College of London. Brian J. Hoskins, internationally recognized for his expertise in dynamical meteorology, received the Charles Chree Medal and Prize. Hoskins is a professor of meteorology at Reading University and president of the International Commission on Dynamical Meteorology of the International Association for Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics. Jim T. Jardine of Moray House College of Education, Edinburgh, has received the Bragg Medal and Prize for his contributions to the teaching of physics. Rodney Louden, professor of physics at the University of Essex, was awarded the Thomas Young Medal and Prize in honor of his outstanding contributions to quantum optics and to the theory of light scattering in particular. Malcolm R. Mackley received the C.V. Boys Prize for his contributions to the hydrodynamics of polymer melts. Mackley is a university lecturer in chemical engineering at Cambridge and director of studies in chemical engineering for Robinson and Downing Colleges. Colin G. Windsor was recognized for his contributions to the study of condensed matter by neutron scattering as the recipient of the Institute of Physics' Duddell Medal and Prize. Windsor is an Individual Merit scientist of the Materials Physics and Metallurgy Division at AERE Harwell. DEATHS Louis Melville Massey Jr., 63, a professor of food science at Cornell University's Agricultural Experiment Station, died February 2 in Geneva, N.Y. Massey had been associated with Cornell for the past 40 years, first as a graduate research assistant in 1947. Massey received his doctorate in biochemistry from Cornell in 1951 and joined the faculty as an assistant professor, later becoming a full professor in 1970. He was the recipient of the Gourley Award in pomology of the American Society of Horticultural Science in 1968. Henry B. Hass, 85, an internationally recognized organic chemist known for his discovery of gas chromatography, died February 13 in Manhasset, N.Y. Hass joined the faculty of Purdue University in 1928 and headed the Department of Chemistry there from- 1932 to 1949. During World War II he worked on the Manhattan Project and in 1949 became manager of research and development for the General Aniline and Film Corporation. Hass then joined the Sugar Research Foundation as president in 1952 and later directed chemical research at M.W. Kellogg until his retirement in 1970. Among Hass' contributions to chemistry are the invention of the heat and mix method of thermal chlorination and the vapor-phase nitration of saturated hydrocarbons.

Happenings

The Scientist Staff

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