Panofsky Prize for ντ discovery
The American Physical Society (APS) W K H Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics has been awarded to Byron G Lundberg and Regina Abby Rameika (Fermilab), Kimio Niwa (Nagoya University) and Vittorio Paolone (University of Pittsburgh) “for the first direct observation of the tau neutrino through its charged-current interactions in an emulsion detector”. Lundberg, Rameika Niwa and Paolone were leaders of the DONUT collaboration, which in July 2000 reported evidence of four tau neutrino interactions (with an estimated background of 0.34 events) in a sample of 203 neutrino-nucleus interactions, consistent with the Standard Model expectation. Although earlier experiments had produced convincing indirect evidence for the ντ existence, the DONUT/Fermilab result represented the first direct observation.
J J Sakurai Prize
The 2022 APS J J Sakurai Prize has been awarded to Nima Arkani-Hamed (Institute for Advanced Study) for the development of transformative new frameworks for physics beyond the Standard Model “with novel experimental signatures, including work on large extra dimensions, the Little Higgs, and more generally for new ideas connected to the origin of the electroweak scale”. One of the leading particle phenomenologists of his generation, Arkani-Hamed has argued that the extreme weakness of gravity relative to other forces of nature might be explained by the existence of extra spatial dimensions, and how the structure of comparatively low-energy physics is constrained within the context of string theory.
Robert R Wilson Prize
In the field of particle accelerators, the Robert R Wilson Prize has been given to Fermilab’s William G Foster and Stephen D Holmes for leadership in developing the modern accelerator complex at Fermilab, enabling the success of the Tevatron program that supports rich programs in neutrino and precision physics. In 2008, three years before the Tevatron closed down, Foster was elected to the US Congress to represent the people of Illinois. Holmes was director of Fermilab’s PIP-II project when he retired in 2018 after 35 years at Fermilab .
Herman Feshbach Prize
The Herman Feshbach Prize was granted to David B Kaplan (University of Washington) for multiple foundational innovations in nuclear theory, including in lattice quantum chromodynamics, effective field theories, and nuclear strangeness, and for strategic leadership to broaden participation between nuclear theory and other fields. Kaplan is director of the Institute for Nuclear Theory at Washington with research interests also including quantum computing, cosmology, and physics beyond the Standard Model.
Henry Primakoff Award
The 2022 APS Henry Primakoff Award for Early-Career Particle Physics has been awarded to Benjamin Nachman of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for innovative contributions to the search for new physics in collider data incorporating original machine learning algorithms, and for the effective communication of these new techniques to the broader physics community. A member of ATLAS, Nachman focuses on track reconstruction inside jets, and is involved in the design of a readout chip for the upgraded ATLAS pixel detector.
