Graedel named to AIP Board

Physics Today’s September 1966 issue included an interview with Herman Branson, who was chair of Howard University’s physics department at the time. Among the questions he fielded about the state of Black people in physics was, “Do you feel that the science community is biased to any degree?” He replied, “I don’t think so…. Scientists (and especially physicists) are among the most liberal people to be found anywhere.”Branson’s response evidently shocked his fellow African American physicist Tannie Stovall of the Linear Accelerator Laboratory in Orsay, France. He submitted a rebuttal, which appeared in Physics Today’s December 1966 issue. “Branson has painted a dangerously rosy picture of the black man in physics,” Stovall wrote. “I would like strongly to take issue with this view.”How could Branson believe that racial bias was absent from science in 1966? I can’t be sure. He might have harbored a belief that persists today: Physics is the objective, methodical study of matter and energy, which are devoid of life, let alone social and political actors. How can physics be biased?But if you read Branson’s interview, it’s clear he was quite aware of the systemic obstacles faced half a century ago by Black students in science. Indeed, he campaigned to remove them. Black colleges and universities had—and still have—less funding than other universities. “We know how to make a first-rate school in America,” Branson told his interviewer. “It’s primarily a question of money.”When Physics Today published its interview with Branson, the last of the five Civil Rights Acts of the 1950s and 1960s—the Fair Housing Act of 1968—was stalled in the Senate. Asked if his physics students were as active in civil rights as humanities students, Branson answered, “Perhaps embarrassingly so.” Quite to his surprise, physics majors were among the student leaders in local civil rights movements. Some of them, he lamented, did not continue to pursue physics.As members of a prominent Black university in the US, those “lost” students of Branson’s who joined the struggle for civil rights were surely made welcome in the physics department. Sadly and reprehensibly, too many of today’s Black physics majors and graduate students do not feel as though they belong. If you doubt that physics is unwelcoming to Black students, read the commentary by Charles D. Brown II, which was posted on Physics Today’s website on 20 July. Brown, who is a postdoc in atomic physics at the University of California, Berkeley, recounts a litany of racist slights and presumptions that he faced as a physics student.Making physics more welcoming to Black people and other underrepresented groups will take effort, not least because a student’s peers have a strong influence on whether a department is welcoming. Professors must lead by example. If you need advice on how to do that, read the report11. AIP National Task Force to Elevate African American Representation in Undergraduate Physics & Astronomy, The Time Is Now: Systemic Changes to Increase African Americans with Bachelor’s Degrees in Physics and Astronomy, American Institute of Physics (2020). from the TEAM-UP Task Force, which was organized by the American Institute of Physics (Physics Today’s publisher).A recent briefing in the Economist identified three policy areas that, if addressed effectively, could improve the lives and opportunities of African Americans: segregation, education, and childhood poverty. Although tackling those and other systemic sources of disadvantage will be expensive and difficult, it needs to be done. And Branson recognized another challenge in his 1966 interview: “Suppose you take a 17-year-old from an indifferent intellectual and cultural background; what can you do to bring him into 20th-century science? It’s not only a tough question for America but for the rest of the world as well.”Given the magnitude of the challenges, the individual physicist, including me, might be tempted to ask with exasperation, What can I do? We can listen to the personal experiences of Black physicists. We can work toward making our departments, labs, and teams more welcoming. And we can confront racism whenever we encounter or witness it. The killing of George Floyd on 25 May again brought into stark, painful view the anti-Black racism that endures in the US. The time is now to do what we can to eliminate it.ReferenceSection:ChooseTop of pageReference <<CITING ARTICLES1. AIP National Task Force to Elevate African American Representation in Undergraduate Physics & Astronomy, The Time Is Now: Systemic Changes to Increase African Americans with Bachelor’s Degrees in Physics and Astronomy, American Institute of Physics (2020). Google Scholar© 2020 American Institute of Physics.

As members of a society affiliated with the American Institute of Physics (AIP), AGU members are eligible for reduced rates on one subscription per person to each of the AlP publications listed below:

Physics Today, published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP), is now being mailed to all AGU members.

Notes on Contributors

An intersociety Joint Council on Quantum Electronics has been established, charged with the responsibility of coordinating and organizing general meetings in the field and of representing its sponsoring organizations in international activities. Cooperating in the new organization are the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the IEEE Groups on Electron Devices and on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

The American Center for Physics will bring three of the nation's leading physics organizations to College Park, Md., to create a focus for physics in the nation's capital. Groundbreaking for the new center was on July 29. It is scheduled to open in September 1993. The initial organizations that will share the site are the American Association of Physics Teachers, the American Institute of Physics, and the American Physical Society.

A Busy March Meeting Is Brewing in Seattle

Within each subject category papers are arranged in ascending page number order. This index is not a translation. It was produced by computer-aided photocomposition directly from the data base of AIP’s Current Physics Information System. It is based on the 1988 Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme developed by AIP. Suggestions for improvements as well as other comments are welcome and should be addressed to the Translations Office. This journal is included in Current Physics Index, a comprehensive abstracts journal covering all of the more than 40 physics and astronomy journals published by the American Institute of Physics and its member societies.

Within each author listing papers are arranged in ascending page number order. This index is not a translation. It was produced by computer-aided photocomposition directly from the data base of AIP’s Current Information system. Suggestions for improvements as well as other comments are welcome and should be addressed to the Translations Office. This journal is also included in a comprehensive index covering all of the more than 40 physics journals published by the American Institute of Physics and its member societies; this is the $80 1800-page cumulative annual part of Current Physics Index.

The American Institute of Physics is seeking applications for a 1‐year fellowship to be spent working as a special assistant on t he staff of a congressional committee or a House or Senate member. The applicant should have demonstrated Ph.D.‐level competence in physics or a closely related field, be a member of an AIP member society, be a U.S. citizen or have permanent resident status, a nd have a pronounced interest in applying scientific knowledge within the legislative processThe Congressional Science Fellowship program is organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and involves 15 sponsoring scientific societies. The purpose of the program is to involve accomplished scientists in the legislative process. This year, 23 Congressional Fellows will be working on Capitol Hill.

A reader's most positive acceptance of a journal is usually expressed by his subscription renewal. Some readers are denied this opportunity to express their feelings about a journal if they receive it gratis as part of a membership in a society or organization. Whichever the case, it is the responsibility of the editor and publisher to meet the needs and expectations of their readers. A variety of techniques are used by editors and publishers to determine what the reader wants. The American Institute of Physics (AIP) has formed the AIP Publications Survey Panel. The Panel contains 3000 members and is a means of establishing regular communications between editors and a cress section of the readership of our journals. This paper examines the publication survey panel, the willingness of society members to participate, and the kinds of information wanted and received.

L. C. Hebel編: Report to flue American Physical Society by the Study Group on Nuclear Fuel Cycles and Waste Management, American Institute of Physics, New York, 1978, 186ページ, 28.5×21cm, $7.00 (Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 50, No. 1).

For the past several years the American Institute of Physics has conducted a placement register for the benefit of physicists seeking employment and for that of employers seeking physicists to fill jobs. Although the placement service register operates continuously at the Institute offices, its most prominent role has been played at the large Winter Meetings of the American Physical Society and, on several occasions, at the APS Spring Meetings in Washington, D.C. This service is considered an essential part of the Institute's efforts on behalf of the physics profession, and it is an encouraging fact that since its establishment large numbers of physicists have been aided in contacting the personnel representatives of university, industrial, institutional, and government laboratories, and that many mutually satisfying placements have resulted.

This grant was $12500 for partial support of an international conference, Molecular Quantum Mechanics 2010, which was held on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, from 24 to 29 May 2010. The conference involved more than 250 participants. The conference schedule ran from as early as 8:00 AM to as late as 10:30 PM at night, in order to accommodate six historical lectures, 16 plenary lectures, 42 invited talks and two very strong poster sessions containing 143 contributed posters. Since 1989, the Molecular Quantum Mechanics (MQM) series of international conferences has show- cased the frontiers of research in quantum chemistry with a strong focus on basic theory and algorithms, as well as highlights of topical applications. Both were strongly in evidence at MQM 2010. At the same time as embracing the future, the MQM conferences also honour the lifetime contributions of some of the most prominent scientists in the field of theoretical and computational quantum chemistry. MQM 2010 recognised the work of Prof. Henry F. ‘Fritz’ Schaefer of the Center for Computational Chemistry at the University of Georgia, who was previously on the faculty at Berkeley The travel of invited speakers was partially covered by sponsorships from Dell Computer, Hewlett-Packard, Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, Virginia Tech College of Science, Molecular Physics, Q-Chem Inc and the American Institute of Physics. By contrast, the conference grant from the Department of Energy was used to provide fellowships and scholarships to enable graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to attend the meeting, and thereby broaden the participation of young scientists at a meeting where in the past most of the attendees have been more senior faculty researchers. We believe that we were very successful in this regard: 118 students and postdocs attended out of the total of 256 participants. In detail, the DOE sponsorship money was partially used for dormitory scholarships that covered the cost of shared accommodation for students and postdocs at Berkeley dormitories. This covered the $200-$305 cost of a shared room for the 5-day duration of the conference. The only condition of these scholarships was that the awardee must present a poster at the meeting. Approximately $7565 was spent for these dormitory scholarships. The remaining expenditures of $4800 was used for 12 merit scholarships which were awarded to students whose poster presentations were judged the best at the conference. This amount covered a significant part of their travel and registration fees.

Focus on Authors