“The Day I Said ‘Nyet!’ to Gorbachev… and Other Life Tales of a Famous Soviet Scientist”

Distinguished University of Maryland Professor Roald Z. Sagdeev discussed “The Day I Said ‘Nyet!’ to Gorbachev… and Other Life Tales of a Famous Soviet Scientist” with journalist Daniel Zwerdling on February 7, 2013 at the Marriott Conference Center on the UMD campus. Sagdeev ran the Soviet space program and advised Soviet leaders on the nuclear arms race. He spoke about love, communism, physics and the end of the Soviet Union with Daniel Zwerdling, an award-winning correspondent and investigative journalist with National Public Radio. 

President Obama presented the National Medal of Science to Professor Sylvester James "Jim" Gates Jr. on Friday, Feb. 1.

Gates, the John S. Toll Professor of Physics and Director of the Center for String & Particle Theory, is a UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) and the Maryland State Board of Education. In addition to his seminal work in supersymmetry, supergravity and string theory, Professor Gates is a well-known advocate for science and science education here and abroad. He has been a frequent guest on NOVA productions on PBS and a featured presenter at the World Science Festivals. He has delivered the annual Karplus Lecture to the National Science Teachers Association and has received the Public Understanding of Science and Technology Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The National Medal--the nation's highest award in science--was established in 1959 and is administered by the National Science Foundation.

In addition, Professor Gates was recently named a University System of Maryland Regents Professor.

For more images from the Friday medal ceremony, see the links below.

Credit: Ryan K Morris/National Science & Technology Medals Foundation

Washington Examiner photos

Getty Images

CRI

Yahoo/Reuters

Physics World's compilation of the year's biggest discoveries included the work of several UMD physicists. The highest-rated discovery was that of the Higgs particle reported by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN. Professors Drew Baden, Sarah Eno, Nick Hadley and Andris Skuja are all collaborators on CMS, and have made significant contributions in the building, running, and analysis of the data. Professor Alberto Belloni will join the department from ATLAS in January, and will become the fifth faculty member on CMS, an international collaboration.

One of the next highest-rated discoveries was attributed to Leo Kouwenhoven and colleagues at Delft University for confirmation of the Majorana fermion, closely following a prediction by Sankar Das Sarma and UMD/JQI colleagues in 2010.

The BaBar experiment's discovery of time-reversal invariance in the quark sector also made the top-10 list. Professors Hassan Jawahery and Doug Roberts played key roles on BaBar, another large international experiment using electron-positron beams at SLAC. Jawahery served as the physics analysis coordinator and later as spokesperson (overall leader) of the experiment.

The Dec. 21 edition of Science named the Higgs boson as the year's top discovery and also cited the importance of the Majorana fermion. 

Assistant Professor Jon McKinney's article, Alignment of Magnetized Accretion Disks and Relativistic Jets with Spinning Black Holes (with Alexander Tchekhovskoy and Roger D. Blandford) was published in Science Express. 

November 15, 2012

Four UMD physicists have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as a Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers. 

Drew Baden - For distinguished contributions to the field of experimental particle physics, particularly for ideas contributing to the discovery of the top quark and to searches for new particles.

Michael Fuhrer - For experimental studies of the fundamental electronic transport properties of nanostructured carbon materials.

Ted Jacobson - For contributions to quantum gravity, black hole thermodynamics, and the formulation and phenomenology of Lorentz-violating modifications of particle and gravitational physics.

Chris Monroe - For the development and demonstration of novel techniques for quantum information processing and quantum simulation with trapped ions.

Other UMD Fellows named were Millard Alexander, Marco Columbini, William Fagan, Cynthia Moss, Aravind Srinivasan and Raymond St. Leger. New Fellows will be presented with an official certificate and a gold and blue (representing science and engineering, respectively) rosette pin on Saturday, 16 February, at the AAAS Fellows Forum during the 2013 AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston, Mass.

November 29, 2012