4/18/2011 Matthias Grosse Perdekamp
The Nuclear Physics Group has inaugurated the Maurice Goldhaber Research Scholar Award in honor of Goldhaber's centennial birthday on April 18, 2011. The first recipient of the award will be announced soon.
Written by Matthias Grosse Perdekamp
The Maurice Goldhaber Research Scholar Award in Nuclear Physics has been inaugurated by the Department of Physics' Nuclear Physics Group in honor of Dr. Maurice Goldhaber’s centennial birthday on April 18th, 2011.
Dr. Goldhaber served on the faculty at the University of Illinois from 1938 to 1950. During his tenure in Urbana, Dr. Goldhaber worked on a wide range of research problems in nuclear physics, including excitation of nuclei with x-rays, resonant scattering of slow neutrons, nuclear decay schemes, and isomeric transitions.
Dr. Goldhaber collaborated with his wife, Gertrude Scharff-Goldhaber, to demonstrate that beta-rays are identical to atomic electrons. With Edward Teller, he developed the concept of coherent oscillations of the protons and neutrons in nuclei leading to the giant dipole resonance.
In 1950, Dr. Goldhaber moved to Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he served as director of the laboratory from 1961 to 1973. Brookhaven scientists won three Nobel Prizes for work carried out in high-energy physics during his tenure as laboratory director.
Dr. Goldhaber's remarkable achievements in research, teaching, and administration have made him one of the world's most distinguished nuclear and particle physicists of the 20th century. He has received many honors, including honorary degrees from Tel-Aviv University, University Louvain-La-Neuve, State University of New York at Stony Brook, and University of Notre Dame, the Bonner Prize in Nuclear Physics of the American Physical Society(1971), the Atomic Energy Commission Citation for Meritorious Contributions (1973), the Oppenheimer Memorial Prize (1982), the National Medal of Science (1983), The Royal Society Rutherford Memorial Lecturer (1987), the Wolf Prize in Physics (1991), and the Enrico Fermi Award (1998).
Dr. Goldhaber is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Goldhaber was the president of the American Physical Society in 1983. (Information taken from http://www.er.doe.gov/fermi/html/Laureates/1990s/mauriceg2.htm).