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1998 NAS awards

12 Jan 1998

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has honoured several physicists and astronomers for outstanding contributions to science.

Carolyn S Shoemaker and her husband Eugene M Shoemaker – two of the discoverers of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 – have won the James Craig Watson Medal for their contributions to astronomy. In the last twenty five years they have discovered over 800 asteroids and 32 comets. Sadly Eugene Shoemaker died in a car crash last year while conducting field research on impact crater research.

In a fitting tribute, his ashes were launched onboard the Lunar Prospecter spacecraft last week. When its batteries fail, the probe will crash onto the surface of the Moon. Shoemaker once said that “not going to the moon and banging on it with my own hammer has been the biggest disappointment in life”.

The NAS Award in Applied Mathematics and Numerical Analysis goes to Paul R Garabedian of New York University for his work on computational fluid dynamics.

Wayne A Hendrickson of Columbia University receives the Alexander Hollaender Award in Biophysics. Hendrickson was chosen for his contributions to macromolecular crystallography.

Finally the award for scientific reviewing goes to James R Holton, of the University of Washington, Seattle, for his reviews on the dynamical meteorology of the Earth’s stratosphere.

The awards will be presented in Washington DC on 27 April.

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