Physicist Awarded Marconi International Fellowship

The Marconi International Fellowship is awarded annually to an individual who has significantly contributed to the advancement of the technology of communications through scientific or engineering discoveries, inventions, or innovations. The 1989 Fellow is Robert N. Hall, a physicist who recently retired from the General Electric Research and Development Center, Schenec tady, N.Y Hall this week will be awarded $35,000 in recognition of his invention of the semiconductor injection laser in 1962, a device that now drives CD players, laser printers, and most optical fiber communications systems. According to a GE research center spokesman, the idea for the semi-conductor injection laser came to Hall in June 1962, after he attended a conference on electronics. Stimulated by research on high-intensity radiation from gallium arsenide being conducted by scientists at RCA Corp. and MIT, a team under Hall’s direction moved swiftly to build and test, within three months, a working semiconductor laser. A native of New Haven, Conn., Hall earned a Ph.D. in nuclear phys- ics from the California Institute of Technology. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and several other physics and engineering societies. Astronomer Harriet L. Dinerstein is the second University of Texas, Austin, scientist in three years to be named winner of the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize, given by the American Astronomical Society. Dinerstein was honored for her studies of the chemical composition of interstellar nebulae, tenuous clouds of gas located between the stars that contain clues to the history of the galaxy. Luigi Mastroianni Jr., Marine Bio- logical Laboratory (MBL) corporation member and founding director of the Divisions of Reproductive Biology and Human Reproduction at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, has been awarded the 1989 King Faisal International Prize in Medicine. The award recognizes outstanding academic work by scholars in any country on a yearly chosen topic. Mastroianni shares the award with University of Cambridge professor Robert Edwards for study in the field of infertility. Research grant development and management for the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science will now be the job of Marilyn H. Appel, the college’s new director of the Office of Spon- sored Projects and Research. Appel also has been recently appointed associate professor of educational psychology at the college. Charles Elachi and John R. Casani, two senior managers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology, were elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering. Both will be inducted during the academy’s annual meeting next October in Washington, D.C. Since 1978, the Israel-based Wolf Foundation has annually awarded $100,000 prizes to individuals whose professional activities “promote science and art for the benefit of humankind.” This year’s science awards—which are divided equally in the cases of co-recipiency—go to achievers in four different disciplines: "Agriculture—Peter M. Biggs, AFRC Institute for Animal Health, Huntington, U.K, and Michael El- liott, AFRC Institute of Arable Crops Research, Rothamsted, U.K., for distinguished contributions to basic science and its successful translation into practice in the fields of animal health and crop protection; "Chemistry—Duilio Arigoni, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland, and Alan R. Battersby, University of Cam( bridge, U.K., for their contributions to the elucidation of the mechanism of enzymic reactions and of the biosynthesis of natural products including life pigments; "Mathematics—Alberto P. Calderon, University of Chicago, for ground- breaking work on singular integral operators and their application to problems in partial differential equations, and John W. Milnor, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ., for original discoveries in geometry, specifically algebraic, combinatorial, and differentiable topology; "Medicine—John B. Gurdon, University of Cambridge, U.K., for his introduction of the xenopus oocyte into molecular biology and for demonstrating that the nucleus of a differentiated cell and that of the egg differ in expression, not content of genetic material; and Edward B. Lewis, California Institute of Technology, for his demonstration of the genetic control of the development of body segments by homeotic genes. The Wolf Prizes are to be presented to recipients next month by Israeli president Chaim Herzog in parliamentary ceremonies at the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem. The newly formed International Biotechnology Suppliers Association (IBSA)—an organization whose goals include the promoting of excellence and innovation in biotechnology and the biosciences—has established its first board of directors. The members are: Herbert L. Burkland, managing director of Scherago Associates Inc., New York; Richard L. Easterday, president of Pharmacia LKB, Piscataway, N.J.; Kenneth S. Halaby, publisher of International Scientific Communications, Shelton, Conn.; Gerald L. Hawk, president of Currents International Inc., Franklin, Mass.; Robert K. Jackson, president of Irvine Scientific (Nippon Mining Co.), Santa Ana, Calif.; Ronald E. Majors, general manager of EM Sciences, Gibbstown, NJ.; Mark A. Newman, president of Lab-Line Instruments Inc., Melrose Park, ill.; Meyer Salfati, president of Chemap, Ag of Switzerland; and Thomas E. Wailer, former vice president of Beckman Instruments Bioanalytical Systems Group, Southern Calif. Also, Linda H. Cartlidge, president of Cartlidge & Associates Inc., will have an ex-officio seat as the IBSA executive director. Bernard Dolowich has been appointed controller for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. His responsibilites include financial reporting, development of accounting systems, and liaison with auditors and consultants. The joint board of directors of the World Wildlife Fund and the Conservation Foundation has named Kathryn S. Fuller president of the combined organization. Fuller, who is the first woman to serve as president of a major international environmental membership group, succeeds William K. Reilly, the new head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Texas Academy of Sciences has named University of Texas, Dallas, professor Carl Collins the 1989 Distinguished Texas Scientist for his leading research in the field of high-energy lasers. Collins is director of the UT-Dallas Center for Quantum Electronics in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. John Fackler, a chemist and dean of Texas A&M University’s College of Science, has been elected chairman of the governing body of the Gordon Research Conferences, which allow academic researchers and industrial scientists from 45 nations in the fields of chemistry, physics, and biology to gather and discuss leading-edge research without public attribution. Says Fackler, “nearly every scientific breakthrough reported in the press has been discussed first at one of the Gordon conferences” The Association for Women Geoscientists has elected its 1989 national board. The new AWG president is Marilyn J. Suiter, director of special programs and editor of Geospectrum for the American Geological Institute, Washington, D.C. Other officers include: Vice president, Suzanne Takken, president of Olanda Enterprises Inc., Oklahoma City; secretary, Selena Billington, a geophysicist at the U.S. Bureau of Mines; treasurer, Catherine Gavigan, vice president of John S. Herold Inc.; and editor, Virginia M. Sand, associate professor of geology at Kent Sate University. AWG is a national professional organization with 14 chapters and nearly 1,000 members. It was recently approved as an affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Paul F. Engstrom, vice president for cancer control at Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, has been named head of community cancer program activities for Fox Chase Network Inc., a subsidiary of the Cancer Center. The subsidiary, formed in December 1986, develops partnerships with area hospitals to establish multidisciplinary cancer programs in the community. The German ,physicist Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsaecker has won the $400,000 Templeton Prize, the major award given in the field of religion. Responsible for several key discoveries in modern nuclear physics, von Weizsaecker will be honored in the spring for “initiating the dialogue between the once hostile disciplines of natural science and religion.” His interest in religion helped to bring about the 1979 conference on “Faith, Science, and the Future,” which was sponsored by the World Council of Churches at MIT. Borland International Inc. recently appointed Richard L Schwartz to the newly created position of chief technical officer. He will be responsible for overall product strategy and interface design of the entire Borland product line. His efforts will focus on key products achieving both a common user interface design and inter-application programmability. The Woldemar A. Weyl International Glass Science Award is presented only once every three years in recognition of scientists whose work has shown “ingenuity, initiative, and innovative thinking.” The latest recipient is Terry Michalske, supervisor of the Surface Science Division at Sandia National Laboratories, who is being honored for his creation of a “new, scientific basis for understanding and predicting the mechanical properties of glass in corrosive environments.”

Physicist Awarded Marconi International Fellowship

The Scientist Staff

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