The Richtmyer Memorial Award is an award for physics education, named for physicist Floyd K. Richtmyer and given annually by the American Association of Physics Teachers. Its recipients include over 15 Nobel Prize winners.
Establishment and award criteria
Floyd T. Richtmyer (1881–1939) was one of the first presidents of the American Association of Physics Teachers and his work helped shape the development of physics in the United States. The Richtmyer Award was established in 1941, and is typically given to educators who have made outstanding contributions as teachers in their fields. It is awarded to those who have not only produced important current research in physics, but to those who have, by means of communication to both students and other educators, imparted information and motivation to participants in the field. The effective use of a teaching method in order to pass on information, and to stimulate interest in physics, is seen as being worthy of recognition in its own right, in addition to the importance of the production of new research.
Recipients of the award deliver a Keynote Address, the annual Richtmyer Lecture, which is designed for communication with non-specialist audiences, during the AAPT Winter Meeting.
Past recipients of the award include "a long list of giants in the field of physics" such as UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau(1989); Steven Chu of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (1990), who also is a UC Berkeley professor of physics and a physics Nobelist, and who has been the 12th United States Secretary of Energy since 2009; and physicists Charles Townes (1959), Emilio Segrè (1957), J. Robert Oppenheimer (1947), and Nobel prize winner Carl Wieman of the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1996.
Since its foundation in 1941, the following scientists from a wide number of institutions have received this award:
Source: American Association of Physics Teachers
1941 - Arthur H. Compton, University of Chicago
1942 - Gordon Ferrie Hull, Dartmouth College
1944 - Karl K. Darrow, Columbia University
1945 - I.I. Rabi, Columbia University
1946 - Paul E. Klopsteg, Northwestern University
1947 - J.R. Oppenheimer, University of California
1948 - Homer L. Dodge, Norwich University
1949 - Lee A. DuBridge, California Institute of Technology
1950 - John H. Van Vleck, Harvard University
1951 - John C. Slater, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1952 - Enrico Fermi, University of Chicago
1953 - Edward M. Purcell, Harvard University
1954 - John A. Wheeler, Princeton University
1955 - Eugene P. Wigner, Princeton University
1956 - Walter H. Brattain, Bell Telephone Laboratories
1957 - Emilio Segre, University of California
1958 - Philip Morrison, Cornell University
1959 - Charles H. Townes, Columbia University
1960 - James A. Van Allen, State University of Iowa
1961 - William A. Fowler, California Institute of Technology
1962 - Thomas Gold, Cornell University
1963 - Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky, Stanford University
1964 - Fred Hoyle, Cambridge University
1965 - William M. Fairbank, Stanford University
1966 - Murray Gell-Mann, California Institute of Technology
1967 - Robert H. Dicke, Princeton University
1968 - Robert R. Wilson, National Accelerator Laboratory
1969 - S. Chandrasekhar, University of Chicago
1970 - Arthur L. Schawlow, Stanford University
1971 - Edwin Land, Polaroid Corporation
1972 - Robert B. Leighton, California Institute of Technology
1973 - Michael E. Fisher, Cornell University
1974 - Steven Weinberg, Harvard University
1975 - Riccardo Giacconi , Harvard University
1976 - Britton Chance, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
1977 - Michael Tinkham, Harvard University
1978 - Sidney Drell, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
1979 - William A. Nierenberg, Scripps Institute of Oceanography
1980 - Edward C. Stone, California Institute of Technology
1981 - Hans Frauenfelder, University of Illinois
1982 - Karen McNally, Seismological Laboratory, California Institute of Technology and University of California, Santa Cruz
1983 - Edward A. Frieman, Science Applications Inc., La Jolla, California
1984 - David N. Schramm, University of Chicago
1985 - Gerry Neugebauer, California Institute of Technology
1986 - Leon M. Lederman, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
1987 - Clifford M. Will, Washington University in St. Louis
1988 - Peter A. Franken, University of Arizona
1989 - Robert J. Birgeneau, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1990 - Steven Chu, Stanford University
1991 - Larry W. Esposito, University of Colorado Boulder
1992 - Kip S. Thorne, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
1993 - Richard E. Smalley, Rice University
1994 - Sheldon Lee Glashow, Harvard University
1995 - Joseph Henry Taylor, Princeton University
1996 - Carl E. Wieman, University of Colorado
1997 - H. Eugene Stanley, Boston University
1998 - Douglas D. Osheroff, Stanford University
1999 - Wayne H. Knox, Bell Laboratories
2000 - William D. Phillips, National Institute of Standards and Technology
2001 - Shirley Ann Jackson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
2002 - Jordan A. Goodman, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
2003 - Margaret Murnane, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO
2004 - Lene Vestergaard Hau, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
2005 - Carlos Bustamante, University of California, Berkeley CA
2006 - Neil Ashby, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO
2007 - Alex Filippenko, University of California, Berkeley CA
2008/9 - Vera Rubin, Carnegie Institution of Washington
2010 - Not Awarded
2011 - Kathryn Moler, Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials and Physics, Stanford University, CA
2012 - Brian Greene, Columbia University, New York, NY
2014 - Sir Michael Berry, University of Bristol
2016 - Derek Muller, Veritasium You Tube Channel, Catalyst
It is the emphasis on mentoring younger teachers that has made the Richtmyer Award distinct from other teaching awards that centre mainly upon the education of students. The Richtmyer Award is the forerunner of modern awards such as the Young Faculty Award (YFA) program established by DARPA, the aim of which is to identify and engage rising research stars in junior faculty positions at U.S. academic institutions.
