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A&S Scientists in Discover
Magazine's Top 100
Other Awards, Honors, and Professorships
A&S Scientists in Discover Magazine's Top 100
Three UW scientists—atmospheric
scientist Qiang Fu, astronomer
Donald Brownlee, and psychologist
Joseph Sisneros—shared the limelight in Discover
magazine’s “100 most important discoveries and developments”
of 2004. All are from the College of Arts and Sciences.
The magazine’s vote for the biggest science development of
2004 is the now-overwhelming evidence of global warming. Discover
noted that global warming skeptics have argued that computer models
cannot explain why the lower atmosphere has apparently warmed less
than the Earth’s surface, but cited research
by Fu’s team that disputes that notion. The work, a reanalysis
of satellite data, concluded that cooling in the stratosphere had
been masking warming in the lower atmosphere that was much greater
than previously recognized.
Number 50 on Discover’s list of achievements is Stardust
mission’s success in capturing particles from comet Wild 2
and returning them to Earth. Brownlee is the principal investigator
of Stardust, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration mission
that launched in 1999 and flew by the comet in January 2004, capturing
thousands of particles less than a millimeter in size. The spacecraft
also took remarkable photographs of the comet. A capsule containing
the particles will be parachuted back to Earth in January 2006.
Sisneros’s
research, number 98 on Discover’s list, concerns
hormonally induced change in hearing sensitivity. He duplicated
a natural physiological change that occurs in the female plainfin
midshipman fish during breeding season—a change in the inner
ear that enables the females to detect higher frequency humming
made by males hoping to attract mates. The discovery eventually
may have human applications, possibly in the area of age-related
hearing loss.
Other
Awards and Honors
Dee Boersma,
professor of biology and adjunct professor of women studies, has
been named the Wadsworth Endowed Chair of Biology.
The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture earned
a 2004 Sci/Teach Web Award from ScientificAmerican.com for its Kennewick
Man on Trial website (http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/kman/kman_home.htm).
Carl de Boor, recently appointed an affiliate professor
of mathematics, has received the National Medal of Science, the
most prestigious science award in the country, in recognition of
his work on spline functions—mathematical expressions that
describe free-form curves and surfaces—which revolutionized
computer-aided geometric design. His work is now routinely applied
in a range of fields including special effects in films and the
aircraft and automotive industries. The UW affiliate professor is
a professor emeritus of computer sciences and mathematics at University
of Wisconsin-Madison.
Branko Grünbaum, professor emeritus of mathematics,
is receiving the 2005 Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition
from the American Mathematical Society for his book, Convex Polytopes
which “has served both as a standard reference and as an inspiration
for three and a half decades of research in the theory of polytopes.”
Mark Haim, visiting artist in the Dance Program,
has received a 2005 National College Choreography Initiative Award—a
leadership initiative of Dance/USA and the National Endowment for
the Arts—to support the commissioning or restaging of works
by contemporary American choreographers. He received the award under
the sponsorship of the University of Maryland/ College Park Dance
Department.
Suzanne Hawley,
professor of astronomy, became director of the Apache Point Observatory
in New Mexico on January 1, 2005. The observatory houses two major
and several smaller telescopes. The UW receives nearly one-third
of the observing time on the 3.5-meter telescope, using it primarily
for faculty and graduate student research. Much of the research
is conducted remotely via the internet.
Sarah Keller, assistant professor of chemistry,
is the recipient of the 2005 Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award, given
by the Biophysical Society to “a woman of very high promise
who has not yet reached a position of high recognition within the
structures of academic society.”
Linda Nash, assistant professor of history, won the 2005
Alice Hamilton Prize from the American Society for Environmental
History, recognizing the best article of the year, for her “The
Fruits of Ill Health: Pesticides and Workers’ Bodies in Post-World
War II California,” OSIRIS, June 2004.
Robin Stacey, associate professor of history, has
been elected to a three-year term as a Councillor of the Medieval
Academy of America, the largest organization in the world devoted
to medieval studies.
Sarah Stein, associate professor of history, is
a finalist for the Koret Jewish Book Award for 2003-2004 from the
Koret Foundation, for her book, Making Jews Modern: The Yiddish
and Ladino Press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires.
Stephen G. Warren, professor of atmospheric sciences
and earth and space sciences, was elected Fellow of the American
Meteorological Society.
Hannah Wiley, professor of dance, has received
a 2005 National College Choreography Initiative award from Dance/USA
to support the Chamber Dance Company’s 2006 performance of
José Limón’s There is a Time.
[Winter-Spring 2005 - Table of Contents]
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