The Optical Society of America (OSA; Washington, DC) has announced the winners of its 2001 awards for scientific achievements. Award categories and winners are listed below:
Overall Distinction in Optics
Frederic Ives Medal/Quinn Endowment
This award is the highest of the society and is given for overall distinction in optics. This year�s recipient, Nick Holonyak Jr., University of Illinois, is awarded for pioneering work in the field of semiconductor lasers and LEDs.
General Distinction Awards
Esther Hoffman Beller Award
This award is for outstanding contributions to optical science and engineering education. This year�s recipient, Douglas S. Goodman of the Polaroid Optical Engineering Department, is awarded for his dedication to teach and inspire others about optics.
Edwin H. Land Medal
This award is for pioneering entrepreneurial creativity that has had a major impact on society. The award is cosponsored with the Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T) and made possible through the support of the Polaroid Foundation. This year�s recipients, George Smith, Bell Labs, retired, and Willard Boyle, Bell Labs, retired, are honored for the invention and development of the charge-coupled device.
OSA Leadership Award/New Focus Prize
This award recognizes a person or group of optics professionals who had significant impact on the field of optics or to society. This year�s recipient, Duncan T. Moore, University of Rochester, is honored for technical, educational and service contributions to the optics community and for contributions in public policy.
Adolph Lomb Award
This award recognizes individuals who have made noteworthy contributions to optics before the age of thirty. This year�s recipient, Barbara A. Paldus, Informed Diagnostics, is honored for developments of the ultrasensitive absolute method for trace analysis of gas-phase species.
C.E.K. Mees Medal
This award is for recognizing the interdisciplinary and international contributions. This year�s recipient, Humio Inaba, Tohoku University and Tohoku Institute of Technology, is honored for contributions in quantum and optical electronics.
David Richardson Medal
This award is for distinguished contributions to technical optics. This year�s recipient, Huibert Visser, Delft University of Technology, is honored for innovative designs of complex optical space instrumentation.
R.W. Wood Prize
This award is for outstanding discovery, scientific or technological achievement or invention in the field of optics. This year�s recipient, Federico Capasso, Lucent Bell Labs, is awarded for seminal contributions to the invention, demonstration and development of the quantum cascade laser.
Specialty Awards
Allen Prize
This award is for graduate students who make outstanding contributions to atmospheric remote sensing. This year�s recipient, David N. Whiteman, NASA Goddard Space Center, is awarded for significant advances in the detection of water vapor, liquid water and aerosols in the atmosphere using Ramon lidar.
Max Born Award
This award is for outstanding contributions to physical, theoretical or experimental optics. This year�s recipient, Bernard Yurke, Lucent Bell Labs, is awarded for contributions in bosonic and fermionic squeezed states and the theory of local reality violations.
Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize
This award is for significant accomplishments in optical engineering. This year�s recipient, Warren J. Smith, Kaiser Electro-Optics, is awarded for providing a lifetime effort in optical engineering and applied optics.
Nick Holonyak, Jr. Award
This award is for significant contributions to optics based on semiconductor materials, including basic science and technological applications. This year�s recipient, Shuji Nakamura, Nichia Chemical Industries Ltd., is awarded for original demonstration and commercialization of GaN-based semiconductor lasers and LEDs.
Ellis R. Lippincott Award
This award is for contributions to vibrational spectroscopy. The award is co-sponsored with the Coblentz Society and the Society for Applied Spectroscopy. This year�s recipient, Lester Andrews, University of Virginia, is awarded for prodigious vibrational spectroscopic investigations and in furthering quantum chemical calculations of vibrational frequencies.
William F. Meggers Award
This award is for outstanding work in spectroscopy. This year�s recipient, Frank C. De Lucia, Ohio State University, is honored for pioneering work in the development for the sub millimeter-wave region of the electromagnetic spectrum and its application to scientific problems in physics, chemistry, and astronomy.
Charles H. Townes Award
This award is for contributions to the field of quantum electronics. This year�s recipient, Amyand David Buckingham, Cambridge University, is awarded for many theoretical and experimental contributions to electro-optics and magneto-optics.
John Tyndall Award
This award is for contributions to fiber optic technology. This year�s recipient, Tatsuo Izawa, NTT Electronics Corporation, is awarded for contributions to vapor-phase axial deposition for optical fiber fabrication and pioneer work on silica-based planar lightwave circuit.