Ellen Gould Zweibel Wins 2016 Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics

COLLEGE PARK, MD, July 20, 2016 – Ellen Gould Zweibel of the University of Wisconsin, Madison has won the American Physical Society’s 2016 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics.

The prize citation recognizes Zweibel for “seminal research on the energetics, stability and dynamics of astrophysical plasmas, including those related to stars and galaxies, and for leadership in linking plasma and other astrophysical phenomena.”

The annual Maxwell Prize is presented for outstanding contributions to the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of properties of highly ionized gases of natural or laboratory origin. The prize was established in 1975 in honor of the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell and is sponsored by General Atomics. Zweibel will receive $10,000 and a travel allowance to attend the 58th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics meeting in San Jose, CA where the prize will be presented. The meeting will take place from October 31 to November 4.

Zweibel graduated from the University of Chicago in 1973 with an A.B. in Mathematics and from Princeton University in 1977 with a Ph.D. in Astrophysical Sciences. She is currently the William L. Kraushaar Professor of Astronomy and Physics and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She was a founding member and is a past Director of the Center for Magnetic Self-­Organization, a Physics Frontier Center funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy. She has a broad research program in plasma astrophysics that spans the study of the Sun and stars, the formation, evolution, and structure of galaxies, and the physics of galaxy clusters. Zweibel has been an APS Fellow since 1991.

Contact: James Riordon, APS, riordon@aps.org, (301) 209-3238

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