November 08 Issue - Employee Monthly Magazine
Laboratory honors two with
prestigious Los Alamos Medal
Editor's note: Laboratory Fellow Robert Cowan and former Laboratory Director Sig Hecker are recipients of the 2008 Los Alamos Medal, the institution's most prestigious award.
Established in 2001, the Los Alamos Medal is the highest honor the Laboratory can bestow upon an individual or small group. Laboratory Director Michael Anastasio will present the medals to Cowan and Hecker during a formal awards ceremony and reception.
Robert Cowan Photo by Sandra Valdez
Illuminating a new path
to atomic physics
Laboratory Fellow and 2008 Los Alamos Medal recipient Robert D. Cowan has had an illuminating career. Literally.
Cowan is known internationally and respected as the father of atomic structure calculations. During his nearly 35-year association with the Laboratory, Cowan developed methods for determining the spectra of different atomic species. His book, The Theory of Atomic Structure and Spectra, published in 1981, still is in use today.
In the mid 1960s, Cowan became the first person to use a computer to calculate atomic spectra—the unique photon wavelengths associated with particular ionization states of atoms. At that time, a British scientist approached him about interpreting spectrographic images of the sun that had been obtained by rockets traveling outside Earth's atmosphere.
Because the atmosphere absorbs light in the ultraviolet region, this portion of the solar spectrum had never been observed before. Scientists were interested in determining what elements were responsible for the part of sunlight blocked by the atmosphere. The spectrographic images revealed several previously unseen bands of light. Cowan raced a team of British experimentalists to determine which atoms were responsible for the lines. His calculations led him to assign the spectral lines to three different ionization states of iron. But the British team published its results first.
Nevertheless, "the field of atomic spectroscopy certainly had changed with these calculations," Cowan said.
After his achievement, Cowan's renown prompted researchers from around the world to query him about spectrographic problems of all kinds.
"Those were days before e-mail, so our dialogues were done by letters, sometimes many of them," he said.
His willingness to provide his computer codes and assist researchers gave Cowan the reputation as an invaluable mentor and allowed him to travel to England, the Netherlands, Sweden, China, and the former Soviet Union to collaborate with researchers.
Outside the Lab, Cowan sought to see the light a different way: through mountain climbing. He has climbed every 14,000-foot peak in Colorado and once took a three-week trek through the Himalayas. That expedition allowed him to reach an altitude of 16,500 feet within 15 miles of Mt. Everest. Probably few on that expedition realized that the soft-spoken physicist had used a computer to see something in sunlight they would never see with their own eyes, even at such a breathtaking height.
—James E. Rickman
Sig Hecker Photos by LeRoy N. Sanchez
Plutonium, actinides—
a life-long passion
Many Laboratory employees have a deep respect and admiration for former Director Siegfried "Sig" Hecker. And not surprisingly, the feeling is mutual.
Currently codirector of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, Hecker recently was awarded the 2008 Los Alamos Medal, the Laboratory's most prestigious award.
"I am delighted and honored to receive the Los Alamos Medal," said Hecker, who headed the Laboratory from 1986 to 1997 and is now director emeritus. "My thanks go to all the terrific people with whom I had the pleasure of working during my 34 years at Los Alamos. The Lab and its people continue to hold a special place in my heart."
Hecker said he came to the Lab three times—as a student, a postdoc, and a staff member. "I spent my honeymoon at Los Alamos as a summer graduate student in 1965," he said. "I had not expected to return, because my lifelong ambition was to be a university professor. However, the Lab was such a fantastic place to work that I wound up postponing the professorship for 37 years until I joined Stanford University in 2005."
His research years at Los Alamos were stimulating, Hecker said. "I came to work on typical metals but became fascinated by plutonium and the actinides," he recalled. "It turned into a life-long passion."
Hecker led the Laboratory at an exciting time in history. "I had a front-row seat on a rapidly changing world," he said. "When I took over in January 1986, we were at the tail end of the Reagan defense buildup to hold back what he termed the 'evil empire.' " The collapse of the Soviet Union changed the nature of the nuclear threat and the Laboratory's role dramatically. "We had the job of redefining the role of the weapons laboratories in the post-Cold War world," said Hecker.
For the past 20 years, Hecker, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford, has divided his time between the science of plutonium and its societal impact. He also is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, among other professional accolades.
—Tatjana K. Rosev
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