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After spending the past two years as deputy assistant secretary-general for scientific and environmental affairs at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Brussels, Marcel Bardon is back at the National Science Foundation. Reassuming his post as director of the NSF's physics division, effective Sept. 1, Bardon replaces acting physics director Gerard M. Crawley, a rotating program manager who will return to teaching and research at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Lab at Michigan State University. The Council of the Royal Society of Chemistry has elected John M. Ward as president for the 1988-to-1990 term. Ward, a corrosion scientist at the central electricity research laboratories of the London Power Company, has a long-standing association with the RSC, serving most recently as chairman of the publications and information board. "A degree in engineering for Indian people is more than a diploma, a job, and a career with a fine company. It's more than a house in the suburbs, more than a boat, more than a car. It means we can survive with dignity." These are the words of Norbert S. Hill Jr., who recently became the first American Indian to receive the Reginald H. Jones Distinguished Service Award from the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering. Currently executive director of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), Hill has been active in the development and administration of educational programs for American Indians for more than 15 years. "Few people have set their sights so high or achieved so much for a population so ethnically diverse, so financially disadvantaged, and so poorly understood by the mainstream culture," said NACME chairman Kay R. Whitmore, president and executive officer of Eastman Kodak Co., in conferring the $10,000 award. The award must be donated to a tax-exempt organization working to increase the number of minority engineers, and Hifi has designated AISES as the recipient of his grant. Robert Selden, director of Los Alamos National Laboratory's Center for National Security Studies, began a two-year term as chief scientist for the U.S. Air Force last month. He is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and his duties include evaluating policies and plans for Air Force research and development and acting as principal representative of the Air Force to the civilian scientific and engineering communities. A physicist, Selden replaces Harold Sorenson, professor of applied mechanics and electrical engineering at the University of California, San Diego. Chemist Harry E. Dietzmann was recently promoted to director of the Petroleum Products Research Department of Southwest Research Institute's Automotive Products Division. He joined the Institute staff in 1965 as a chemist and then conducted field studies for the emissions research department, characterizing emissions from power plants, mainline gas transmission turbines, and compressor engines. Also at Southwest Research Institute, James Lankford Jr., institute scientist in the department of materials sciences, has been named a Fellow of the American Society of Metals. This honor, according to the institute, represents Lankford's "pioneering and innovative research in the growth of cracks, especially very small fatigue cracks, and for the fundamental investigations into the failure mechanisms of ceramics." Thomas L. Poulos and Walter J. Stevens have accepted positions as director and associate director, respectively, at the Center for Advanced Research in Biotechnology (CARB), a Maryland-based joint research venture for academic, government, and industrial scientists. Poulos, who had been acting director prior to the appointment, was previously associated as a biologist with Genex Corp. and also served as a professor of biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego. Stevens has been a National Bureau of Standards (NBS) computational physicist since 1975. The goal of CARB, one of four research centers in the Maryland Biotechnology Institute, is to establish a world-class, multidisciplinary center for protein engineering, structure, and function—a new area of biotechnology that allows scientists to alter a protein's atomic structure in order to enhance its useful properties. Nobel laureate Luis W. Alvarez died Sept. 1 at age 77 from complications from a series of opera. tions for cancer of the esophagus. He was the winner of the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physics and helped develop the atomic bomb and a theory that asteroids wiped out the dinosaurs. Look for a complete obituary and story in the next issue of The Scientist. Following a 20-year science career at B.F. Goodrich Co., Cleveland, Michael M. O'Mara has been appointed manager of the Chemical Research Center at the General Electric Research and Development Center, Schenectady, N.Y. At Goodrich, O'Mara was senior vice president of advanced polymers and technology, at GE, he will head a 250-member chemical research staff. An expert on the combustibility of polyvinylchloride, O'Mara has developed a technique for measuring one part in a billion of vinyl chloride in air, has obtained U.S. Food and Drug Adininistration approval for a new antioxidant, and has developed a process for making a fire-retardant formulation involving a polyurethane coating on a nylon base. The Pittsburgh area's only industry member of the National Academy of Sciences, physicist John Kenneth Huim, has been named chief scientist emeritus by Westinghouse Electric Corp. An internationally recognized authority on superconductivity, Huim is the first scientist in Westinghouse's 100-year history to have the honorary title conferred upon him. Last year, he was chairman of a National Academy panel of 20 leading scientists that recommended to Congress a course of action on the newly discovered high-temperature superconductors. "As chief scientist emeritus, Dr. Huim will provide us with advice and counsel on a broad range of topics, continuing a distinguished career which has brought Westinghouse recognition as a world leader in science and technology," says Isaac R. Barpal, vice president, research and development. For the past eight years, HuIm, 65, was responsible for the planning, development, and funding of the Westinghouse R&D center's scientific programs. The Smithsonian Institution has announced the appointment, effective Sept.1, of Eric A. Fischer as the new deputy director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, headquartered in Panama City, Panama. Fischer replaces James R. Karr, who has accepted a position at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Va. An evolutionary biologist, Fischer has done much of his research in Panama. His studies have focused on the evolution of sexual patterns and behavior in coral-reef fishes, and on processes of species formation. Last month the American Society of Civil Engineers presented the 1988 International Coastal Engineering award to Douglas L. Inman, "in recognition of outstanding leadership and development in coastal engineering by applying physics to the problems of sediment transport such as beach erosion and coastal structures." Inman is a professor at the University of California at San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

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