The American Physical Society
celebrates its 100th anniversary
Cornell University is there,
as it was from the beginning
Cornell's indelible associations with the American Physical Society (APS), going back to its founding 100 years ago, are in evidence this week as the organization celebrates its centennial at the Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta. The APS says this is the largest physics meeting of all time, with an attendance of 10,000.
As just one statistic at a meeting of superlatives: The APS is bringing together about 50 Nobel Prize winners, which the APS claims is the greatest gathering of Nobelists outside of Sweden, "and the largest meeting ever of physics prize-winners anywhere." Many of them were honored at an APS luncheon Monday, March 22.
 Among the Cornell laureates present at the meeting are Hans Bethe, the 1967 laureate, who on Wednesday, March 24 will be talking on his memories of the Manhattan Project, which led to the development of the atomic bomb. Bethe's talk will be given during a session devoted to the work of the late I.I. Rabi, who earned his undergraduate degree at Cornell and whose work on magnetic resonance made him one of the century's stellar physicists.
Also present are Robert C. Richardson, Cornell vice provost for research, David M. Lee, professor of physics, and Stanford University professor Douglas Douglas Osheroff, who was a Cornell graduate student studying under Lee and Richardson in the 1970s when the three discovered the superfluidity of helium-3, for which they earned the Nobel Prize in physics in 1996. Another attendee is Kenneth G. Wilson, a professor of physics at Ohio State University, who was professor of physics and nuclear studies at Cornell when he won the 1982 prize for discoveries he made in understanding how bulk matter undergoes a "phase transition."
Cornell's name also is much in evidence at an exhibition of events connected to APS through the years. One of the exhibits, "To Advance and Diffuse the Knowledge of Physics: 100 Years of the American Physical Society," recalls that the APS's oldest publication, Physical Review, was founded at Cornell six years before the inaugration of the APS itself. The modest scientific publication was sponsored by the Cornell Department of Physics at what was then a small, 25-year-old university. Today, Physical Review is probably the most prestigious physics journal in the world.
The journal was supported by the university until 1913 when it was acquired by the APS, but it continued to be published at Cornell until it moved to the University of Minnesota in 1926.
On view at the APS meeting are photos of three of the founding members of the APS who were also founders of the journal. The photos, on loan from the Cornell Archives in Kroch Library, show Edward L. Nichols, the first editor and head of the physics department from 1887 to 1919; Ernest Merritt, editor of the Physical Review for two decades, who succeeded Nichols as head of the physics department; and Frederick Bedell, editor for a decade.
Also on display in Atlanta is Cornell's metal plate from which was printed Page 1 of Volume 1, July-August 1893, of the Physical Review.
The centennial meeting also is looking to the future with a new program, the "Public Face of Physics," in which 22 younger physicists have been chosen to be public spokespersons to provide information about what physicists do and what their research means. Among those chosen is Eberhard Bodenschatz, 39, Cornell associate professor of physics, who notes that as "a dedicated physicist and teacher" he is interested in both undergraduate and graduate education.
Bodenschatz is among the 30 or so Cornell faculty and students in the Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics (LASSP) presenting presenting papers at the meeting. One of his two papers, to be presented on Wednesday, March 24, will be on the use of wax sheets as a model for the movement of tectonic plates. A session of invited papers on "Nanoscale Energy Localization in Nonlinear Systems" also has a strong Cornell connection. Albert Sievers, E.L.Nichols Professor of Physics and director of LASSP, and a Japanese colleague will present different aspects of this new field that they have uncovered.
Others giving papers include Cornell post-doctoral associate Stephane Evoy and graduate students Lidija Sekaric and Dustin Carr, working under Harold Craighead, Cornell professor of applied and engineering physics, and Jeevak Parpia, Cornell professor of physics. They are reporting on an ultra-small potential computer data storage system that could gather up to 100 times as much information in the same space as present-day magnetic data disks.
Other Cornellians presenting papers range from Jay Orear, professor emeritus of physics ("Misconceptions About Physics"), to graduate student Jeffrey Tomasi ("Lattice Defect Mobility and Interaction Between Two Dimensions").
Finally, five Cornell students have won APS travel awards to attend the meeting. They are juniors Amit Mehta and Alexander Rau; senior Ilarion Melnikov from Russia, and graduate students Gilman Toombes from Australia and Harald Pfeiffer from Germany.
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