George Sterman Named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Director of the C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics cited for advances in quantum field theory
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| Dr. George Sterman |
STONY BROOK, NY, January 27, 2012 – George Sterman, PhD, director of the C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook University, has been named a Fellow of the prestigiousAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for his advances in quantum field theory that helped establish the current understanding of strong interactions and which facilitate the analysis of high energy particle experiments.
“It is an honor to be recognized by a premier scientific organization, and to join the ranks of colleagues who have my great respect,” said Dr. Sterman, who is widely known for his contributions to the understanding of the forces shared by the elementary particles known as quarks and gluons.
Dr. Sterman is excited about results coming from the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and highest energy particle accelerator located near Geneva, Switzerland. He is seeking ways to improve predictions for that machine, and to use it and others like the RHIC accelerator at Brookhaven National Laboratory, to see deeper into the laws of nature. “I’m also fascinated with the mathematical structure of our theories of elementary particles and forces, and I’m exploring the interface between math and physics.”
“Dr. Sterman’s research in elementary particle physics, especially on the implications of quantum field theory to high energy collisions, has helped to establish the theoretical framework for the design and interpretation of experiments that investigate fundamental forces and matter in the universe,” said Dennis N. Assanis, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Stony Brook University. “Not only does it play an important role in the verification of the current Standard Model, its applications are vital to the discovery and analysis of theories that extend the Standard Model, including string theory.”
In November, the AAAS Council elected only 539 of its more than 125,000 members to this elevated rank because of their efforts toward advancing science applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished. AAAS will recognize Dr. Sterman at the Fellows Forum to be held on February 18, 2012, during their annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia. The new Fellows will receive a certificate and a blue and gold rosette as a symbol of their distinguished accomplishments.
Dr. Sterman received an AB from the University of Chicago in 1968 and a PhD from the University of Maryland in 1974. He joined Stony Brook as a research associate in 1976, and became director of the C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics in 2001.
In addition to being elected as a 2011 AAAS Fellow, he is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1985, the J.J. Sakurai Prize for Elementary Particle Theory in 2003 and was named a Distinguished Professor in 2004. He is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society, served as an Associate Editor for Physical Review Letters and authored the graduate level textbook, An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory.
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© Stony Brook University 2011
