Notables

Riccardo Giovanelli, professor of astronomy, will receive the Cavaliere nell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, one of the highest honors that Italy, his country of origin, bestows upon scientists. He will be honored "for having brought distinction, with your eminent studies, to the presence of Italy in the Astronomical Sciences and contributing, through your prestigious achievements, to confirm the value of our scientists," according to a letter from Franco Mistretta, the consul general of Italy in New York. Giovanelli will receive the honor Feb. 28 at the Italian Consulate in New York City. At Cornell since 1991, Giovanelli formerly was head of the Radio Astronomy Group at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. A member of the American Astronomical Society, the International Astronomical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he won the H. Draper Medal and Prize in Astronomical Physics in 1989 from the National Academy of Sciences. A radio astronomer, Giovanelli studies areas of observational cosmology and the structure, evolution and environments of galaxies. He has studied the large-scale structure of the universe and is measuring galaxy distances.

Watt W. Webb, professor of applied and engineering physics, has been selected to receive the 1997 Ernst Abbe Lecture Award, a joint award of the Royal Microscopical Society and Carl Zeiss Inc. He will receive the award in ceremonies March 4 at the Biophysical Society meeting in New Orleans. He also will present his work in a lecture at the New York Academy of Sciences at a later date. Webb received the award "in recognition of his wide-ranging contributions to quantitative microscopy and his significant discoveries in fluorescence microscopy and spectroscopy." Webb has been at Cornell since 1961. He directs the National Institutes of Health-National Science Foundation Developmental Resource for Biophysical Imaging and Opto-electronics, and he is affiliated with Cornell's Biotechnology Program, the Materials Science Center, the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility, the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source, the Cornell National Supercomputer Facility and the Theory Center. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a founding fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences. He won the APS Biological Physics Prize in 1990.