Physics Faculty Awards

Our biggest news story is that Steve Chu shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics, marking the third Nobel Prize in as many years for the Stanford Physics community (see article). In addition to this exciting news, we have several other faculty awards to report. Professor Leonard Susskind was awarded the J. J. Sakurai Prize for theoretical particle physics from the American Physical Society, "for his pioneering contributions to hardonic string models, lattice gauge theories, quantum chromodynamics, and dynamical symmetry breaking." Prof. Susskind will be presented with his award at the APS/AAPT Meeting in Columbus, Ohio next April. Other physics faculty honorees include Professor Patricia Burchat, who was selected as a recipient of the prestigious Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching for the 1996-97 academic year, and Professor and Department Chair Blas Cabrera, who was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society with citation for his "precision measurement of the Cooper pair mass in a superconductor and his search for dark matter in the forms of magnetically charged particles or weakly interacting massive particles." In addition to these faculty awards, the Physics Department was honored by a special recognition from the University for outstanding major advising.