Professor
Jerry Gollub has received one of the most prestigious awards
in physics, the 2003 Fluid Dynamics Prize of the American Physical
Society (APS). The award will be presented at a ceremony on
Nov. 23, 2003. He is the only winner in the history of the prize
to hail from a liberal arts college.
The Fluid
Dynamics Prize is one of a number of prizes awarded annually
in different areas of physics by the APS. Established in 1979,
the prize recognizes and encourages outstanding achievement
in fluid dynamics research. The prize consists of a certificate
and a cash award.
The APS cited
Gollub for “his elucidation of chaos, instabilities, mixing
and pattern formation in various contexts including fluid convection,
and his contribution to our understanding of surface waves,
film and granular flows, all through his clever experiments,
lucid papers, and lively lectures.” Twenty-four Haverford
students, from the class of 1975 to the class of 2003, collaborated
on the work the prize recognizes.
This is not
Gollub’s first award from the APS; he was the first recipient
of the Society’s Award for Research in an Undergraduate
Institution in 1985. He has also held Danforth, Woodrow Wilson,
and Guggenheim Fellowships. He became a Fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992 and, the following year,
was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences,
where he is the only physicist from an undergraduate institution.
A member of
Haverford’s faculty since 1970, Gollub received his undergraduate
degree, summa cum laude, in 1966 from Oberlin College and his
Ph.D. in experimental condensed matter physics from Harvard
University in 1971. He has performed a wide range of experiments
on nonlinear and non-equilibrium phenomena, including studies
of instabilities and pattern formation in fluids, chaotic dynamics
and turbulence, nonlinear waves, patterns formed at the surface
of growing crystals, the dynamics of granular materials, and
mixing in fluids. He has co-authored a textbook on chaotic dynamics,
and is a member of the graduate groups in physics and mechanical
engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.
