UI Physics & Astronomy
1999 Newsletter
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INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Special Points of Interest:
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Faculty Highlights/Research
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James Van Allen
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James Van Allen, Regent Distinguished Professor, was honored twice this past year for his many achievements. On April 13, 1999, Prof. Van Allen was one of six distinguished individuals to be honored as Inaugural Alumni Fellows of the College of Liberal Arts by Dean Linda Maxson. On May 27, 1999, Prof. Van Allen received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Johns Hopkins University at its 123rd commencement ceremony in recognition of his early laboratory work at the JHU Applied Physics Laboratory. Today Prof. Van Allen is still very active with his research. He is currently working on analysis of the continuing flow of cosmic ray data from his instrument on Pioneer 10 (now over 6.8 billion miles from the Earth), and continues to work with Associate Research Scientist Bruce Randall on a combined study of Galileo entry probe data at Jupiter and the 1974 data of Pioneer 11.
Louis Frank
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Louis Frank, Carver/James A. Van Allen professor of physics, received the honor of delivering the University of Iowa's sixteenth annual Presidential Lecture this past February. Prof. Frank's talk, "Small Comets and Our Origins: The Ecstasy and Agony of the Scientific Debate," presented an entertaining and historical perspective on the discovery of small comets, the implications of this discovery on the origin of life, and a discussion of obstacles facing a scientist when his research leads him to confront accepted scientific assumptions. The Presidential Lecture is an honor bestowed upon one prominent faculty member each year. More information on Prof. Frank's small comet theory can be found on the internet at
http://smallcomets.physics.uiowa.edu/.
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Donald Gurnett
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In April 1998, Donald Gurnett, Carver/James A. Van Allen professor of physics, was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Prof. Gurnett joins James Van Allen as one of two UI members in the nation's most distinguished scientific organization. Recently, Prof. Gurnett's research team was awarded a $4 million NASA contract to provide instrumentation for a low-frequency radar that will be flown on the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft which is scheduled for launch in 2003. The University of Iowa, in collaboration with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of Rome, and Rockwell Collins, will provide the 160-foot-long antennas and related electrical instruments that the Mars spacecraft will use to probe beneath the planet's surface to search for underground water as well as study its ionosphere. Prof. Gurnett's other research currently includes the Cassini Spacecraft which is on its way to Saturn for arrival in 2004.
In November 1998, Amitava Bhattacharjee founded and was appointed as first chair of the APS Topical Group in Plasma Astrophysics. The principal objective of this group is the advancement and diffusion of plasma astrophysics--an interdisciplinary body of knowledge seeking common ground between plasma physics and astrophysics, and involving the application of fundamental concepts of plasma physics to the solution of outstanding problems in astrophysics.
Craig Kletzing
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Craig Kletzing has been selected as the Principal Investigator for a NASA sounding-rocket flight from Poker Flat in the winter of 2001. Prof. Kletzing's group will make measurements of electrons and their correlation with medium frequency Langmuir waves to better understand the interaction of the auroral electrons with ionospheric plasma. Prof. Kletzing has also begun a collaboration with a laboratory plasma group at UCLA to investigate electron acceleration by Alfvén waves. Both projects are related to his on-going interest in auroral processes.
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Usha Mallik
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Usha Mallik has been appointed to a three-year position by the Secretary of Energy to begin this fall as a member of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel in the Department of Energy. Panel members advise the DOE on policy issues and other matters relating to high energy physics. Prof. Mallik is also the Principal Investigator for the High Energy Physics Department of Energy grant.
Robert Mutel received the inaugural University of Iowa President's Award for Technology Innovation for his work with the Iowa Robotic Observatory (IRO). The $3,000 cash prize is given to an individual or team of individuals of the University of Iowa community in recognition of the most creative use of technology for the benefit of the learning community. The IRO consists of an Automated Telescope Facility (located on campus in Iowa City) and a fully robotic telescope in southern Arizona operated over the Web. The facility is used by more than 700 UI students each year and by over 650 additional users worldwide. Information on the Iowa Robotic Observatory can be found on the web at
http://denali.physics.uiowa.edu/.
Edwin Norbeck and Linbo Yang, who received his Ph.D. in May 1999 for his part of the work, have been studying odd-even Z effects in the breakup of high-energy beams of heavy nuclei. The experiments used 58Fe and 58Ni beams from the National Superconducting Cyclotron at Michigan State University. They found that the breakup fragments are more likely to be nuclei with an even atomic number (Z), such as carbon, oxygen, and neon than with an odd atomic number, such as nitrogen, fluorine, and sodium. Even more mysterious is the observation that for otherwise identical experiments the nickel beam produces more of the fragments with an even atomic number than the iron beam.
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Fred Skiff
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Recently, two faculty members were honored with Fellowships in the American Physical Society. In 1998, Wayne Polyzou received an APS Fellowship for his contributions to understanding the formulation of Poincaré invariant few-body models. In 1999, Fred Skiff received his fellowship for fundamental experiments on wave-particle interactions and the development of experimental techniques using laser-induced florescence. The APS fellowship is given to those members for advances in knowledge through original research and publication and innovative contributions in the application of physics to science and technology. Previous departmental fellowship recipients include Profs. Bhattacharjee, Frank, Gurnett, Mallik, Norbeck, Payne, Smirl, and Van Allen.
Mary Hall Reno
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Mary Hall Reno was named Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Faculty Director at the University of Iowa this past August. Prof. Reno was on the WISE advisory board for a year prior to being named Faculty Director. The WISE program serves the University community from undergraduates through professors and professional staff by working to expand and improve opportunities for women in science and engineering. In addition, the WISE program offers support for precollege supplemental science programs such as elementary school science clubs and Field Biology Summer Camp. Prof. Reno has also been selected as an organizer for an informal workshop next summer at the Aspen Center for Physics in Aspen, Colorado. The workshop titled, "Neutrinos with Mass and Oscillations, Present and Future Experiments," will bring together theorists and experimentalists to discuss the implications of current experimental constraints and to think about future experiments to test theoretical ideas about neutrino mass and oscillations. It is scheduled to be held from June 26 - July 16, 2000.
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Steven Spangler
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Steven Spangler received the 1998 Editor's Citation for Excellence in Refereeing for Geophysical Research Letters. Prof. Spangler was also recently recognized for his website on General Astronomy. This website has been selected as a featured site in StudyWeb as one of the best educational resources on the web. StudyWeb is one of the Internet's premier sites for educational resources for students and teachers. You may view this website at
http://www.studyweb.com/, and go to the Science:Astronomy:Courses, Colleges & Schools section.
Jack Fix has moved on to become Dean of the College of Science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville after 30 years of service to the University of Iowa. The course Prof. Fix started in general astronomy still enrolls about 500 nonscience majors each year.
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