Nobel Laureate Martin Perl Honored at Commencement

Martin L. Perl, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in physics for teh discovery of the tau lepton, received an honorary doctorate of science at commencement on June 14th.

Perl credits Union with his decision to study physics, thanks to classes he took while working as a chemical engineer for the General Electric Co. in Schenectady.

“I got to know a wonderful physics professor, Vladimir Rojansky,” Perl writes in his official biographical statement. “One day he said to me ‘Martin, what you are interested in is called physics, not chemistry!’ At the age of 23, I finally decided to begin the study of physics.”

For more on Martin Perl, see the Chronicle story

Prof. Surman Publishes in Phys. Rev. C

An article by Rebecca Surman, associate professor of Physics, was recently published in the April issue of the journal Physical Review C. The article, “Neutron capture rates near A=130 that effect a global change to the r-process abundance distribution,” was co-authored with J. Beun and G.C. McLaughlin of North Carolina State University and W.R. Hix of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Surman gave invited seminars on her work at TRIUMF National Laboratory in Vancouver and at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University. This week, she also presented an invited talk on her work at the national nuclear structure conference, “Collective Motions in Nuclei under Extreme Conditions (COMEX 3),” in Mackinac Island, Mich.