Bruce Hapke, 2001 Gerard P. Kuiper Prize recipient
Bruce W. Hapke, Professor of Planetary Sciences in the Department of Geology and Planetary Science of the University of Pittsburgh, was chosen by the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society as the winner of the Kuiper Prize for the year 2001. The DPS is the premier international organization of professional planetary scientists and the Kuiper Prize is the most distinguished award given by the organization. The prize was established by the DPS to recognize and honor outstanding contributors to planetary science, and is awarded annually to "scientists whose achievements have most advanced our understanding of the planetary system."
The Kuiper Prize will be awarded to Professor Hapke on Friday, November 30, 2001, at 2:00 PM CST at the Hyatt Regency in New Orleans, where the DPS Meeting is being held this year. Following the presentation of the award, Professor Hapke will deliver the Kuiper Prize Lecture on the topic, "Space Weathering - Surfing the Shifting Paradigms." The prize is named in honor of Gerard P. Kuiper, who is widely regarded as the founder of modern planetary astronomy. Previous winners have included Carl Sagan, James Van Allen, and Eugene Shoemaker.
Dr. Hapke's research specialty is the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with planetary surfaces. This interaction underlies the field of remote sensing, which is the science of learning about an object without physically touching it. Because spacecraft - both manned and unmanned - have landed on tiny fractions of the surfaces of only the moon, Mars, Venus, and the asteroid Eros, almost everything we know about the planets in our solar system is obtained by remote sensing. Dr. Hapke has developed remote sensing theories that are widely used by planetary scientists to analyze planetary data obtained by instruments aboard spacecraft and attached to telescopes. Many of the spacecraft images that are published in newspapers and magazines have first been processed using his theories. He has taken part in several NASA missions, including the Apollo missions to the moon, the Mariner 10 missions to Venus and Mercury, and the Viking landings on Mars, and has published over 100 papers in professional books and journals about the surfaces of planets.
Bruce Hapke was born in Racine, Wisconsin, and attended public schools there. He earned a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a Doctorate from Cornell University. During the Korean war he served as a commissioned officer on active duty with the U. S. Naval Reserve. He was a Senior Research Associate in the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research at Cornell University. Since 1967 he has been a member of the faculty of the Department of Geology and Planetary Science of the University of Pittsburgh. He is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and served as the chair of the Division for Planetary Sciences during 1988-1989.
Michael Brown, 2001 Harold C. Urey Prize recipient
Michael E. Brown, Assistant Professor of Planetary Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, was chosen by the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society as the winner of the Urey Prize for the year 2001. The DPS is the premier international organization of professional planetary scientists. It awards the Urey Prize on an annual basis to recognize and encourage outstanding achievements in planetary science by a young scientist.
The Urey Prize will be awarded to Professor Brown on Wednesday, November 28, 2001, at 2:00 PM CST at the Hyatt Regency in New Orleans, where the DPS Meeting is being held this year. Following the presentation of the award, Professor Brown will deliver the Urey Prize Lecture on the topic, "What Happened in the Outer Solar System?" The Urey prize is named in honor of Harold C. Urey, who was a Nobel Laureate in chemistry and a pioneer in the study of geochemical processes in the solar system.
Professor Brown's wide-ranging interests as an observational astronomer have addressed many problems in the field. He measured the sulfur ion emission from the Io torus and quantified the relationship between Io's volcanoes as a sulfur source and the subsequent evolution of ionic sulfur in the environment of the Jovian magnetosphere. He produced high resolution spectra and images of emission lines in the comets Hale-Bopp and Huyakutake, imaged time variable auroral arcs in atomic oxygen lines on Ganymede, and he mapped the surface and spatially resolved the atmosphere of Titan. He is also the discoverer of sodium and potassium in Europa's atmosphere, water ice on the surface of Neptune's satellite Nereid, and ammonia ice on the surface of Charon. His many research contributions are widely accepted by the planetary science community.
Andre Brahic, 2001 Sagan Medal recipient
André Brahic, Professor of Planetary Science at l'Université Paris 7 Denis Diderot in France, was chosen by the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society as the winner of the Sagan Medal for the year 2001. The DPS is the premier international organization of professional planetary scientists. It awards the Sagan Medal on an annual basis to recognize and honor outstanding communication by an active planetary scientist to the general public.
The Sagan Medal will be awarded to Professor Brahic on Thursday evening, November 29, 2001, at the society's banquet in New Orleans, where the DPS Meeting is being held this year. Dr. Brahic will also be the featured speaker at a special public lecture the previous evening sponsored by the Ponchartrain Astronomical Society and The Kenner Observatory and Planetarium. The public lecture will be part of a program scheduled to begin at 7:30 PM at The Kenner Observatory and Planetarium in Rivertown, near the New Orleans International Airport. The topic of Professor Brahic's talk is, "Enfants du Soleil: The Story of our Origins." The Sagan Medal is named in honor of the late Carl Sagan of Cornell University, an outstanding scientist who, through public lectures, TV series, and books, significantly contributed to a public understanding of and enthusiasm for planetary science.
For more than 25 years, Professor Brahic has been active in the study of planetary rings, participating in the Voyager mission, and currently is a member of the Imaging Team of the Cassini mission en route to Saturn. In addition to his scientific research, Professor Brahic has written at least 100 articles for the popular press, has written eight popular books, had made numerous appearances on television, and gives frequent and well-attended public lectures. During the Voyager missions he was one of the most sought after personalities to convey the excitement and wonder of that mission to the French-speaking public, but remarkably also among the English-speaking press. His most recent book, Les Enfants du Soleil (The Children of the Sun) is a best-selling science book in the French-speaking world. Professor Brahic is distinguished in his public communication by his joyous and enthusiastic style, but also by his rigorous attention to scientific accuracy. Thus it is entirely appropriate that he is sometimes referred to as "the Carl Sagan of France."