John Bahcall Receives Enrico Fermi Award

U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham today named John Bahcall, Raymond Davis, Jr. and Seymour Sack as winners of the Enrico Fermi Award.

The Fermi award is a presidential award and recognizes scientists of international stature for their lifetimes of exceptional achievement in the development, use or production of energy (broadly defined to include the science and technology of nuclear, atomic, molecular, and particle interactions and effects).

Drs. Bahcall and Davis will receive the award for their research in neutrino physics. Dr. Sack will receive the award for his contributions to national security. The winners will receive a gold medal and a citation signed by the President and by the Secretary of Energy. Drs. Bahcall and Davis will share an award and so will each receive a $93,750 honorarium; Dr. Sack will receive a $187,500 honorarium.

"The contributions these distinguished scientists have made to understanding the world around us and to our national security are immense," Secretary Abraham said. "Their lifetime of innovative research follows in the tradition of Enrico Fermi, the great scientist we commemorate with this award."

More Introduction and Acceptance Speech by John Bahcall for 2003 Enrico Fermi Award ceremony<br>

The citation for the award to Drs. Bahcall and Davis will read: “For their innovative research in astrophysics leading to a revolution in understanding the properties of the elusive neutrino, the lightest known particle with mass.” Bahcall and Davis are the scientists most responsible for the field of solar neutrino physics and neutrino astronomy. Bahcall, a theorist, and Davis, an experimentalist, helped determined that neutrinos have mass and that electron neutrinos oscillate into many “flavors” on their way from the sun to the earth.

Dr. Bahcall, 68, received his B.S. degree in physics from the University of California at Berkeley, his M.S. degree from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. degree from Harvard. He began his career as a research fellow at Indiana University. He taught physics at California Institute of Technology from 1962–70. Since 1971 he has been Professor of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study. He is also a visiting lecturer at Princeton University.

The Department of Energy administers the Fermi Award for the White House. Secretary Abraham will present the awards on October 22 at a conference in Washington, D.C. The conference, “Nuclear Energy and Science for the 21st Century: Atoms for Peace Plus Fifty,” marks the fiftieth anniversary of the speech by President Eisenhower to the United Nations General Assembly on the peaceful uses of the atom. The conference and Fermi Award ceremony are open to the public and press, but registration is required and seating is extremely limited. Details on the conference and online registration are available at www.ifpaenergyconference.com

The Fermi Award, one of the government’s oldest and most prestigious science and technology awards, dates to 1956. It honors the memory of Enrico Fermi, leader of the group of scientists who, on December 2, 1942, achieved the first self-sustained, controlled nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago. Past recipients include physicists John von Neumann (an Institute for Advanced Study Faculty member from 1933–57), Ernest O. Lawrence, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, and Sheldon Datz.