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 Chicago1942 - Gordon Ferrie Hull, Dartmouth College1944 - Karl K. Darrow, Columbia University1945 - I.I. Rabi, Columbia University1946 - Paul E. Klopsteg, Northwestern University1947 - J.R. Oppenheimer, University of California1948 - Homer L. Dodge, Norwich University1949 - Lee A. DuBridge, California Institute of Technology1950 - John H. Van Vleck, Harvard University1951 - John C. Slater, Massachusetts Institute of Technology1952 - Enrico Fermi, University of Chicago1953 - Edward M. Purcell, Harvard University1954 - John A. Wheeler, Princeton University1955 - Eugene P. Wigner, Princeton University1956 - Walter H. Brattain, Bell Telephone Laboratories1957 - Emilio Segre, University of California1958 - Philip Morrison, Cornell University1959 - Charles H. Townes, Columbia University1960 - James A. Van Allen, State University of Iowa1961 - William A. Fowler, California Institute of Technology1962 - Thomas Gold, Cornell University1963 - Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky, Stanford University1964 - Fred Hoyle, Cambridge University1965 - William M. Fairbank, Stanford University1966 - Murray Gell-Mann, California Institute of Technology1967 - Robert H. Dicke, Princeton University1968 - Robert R. Wilson, National Accelerator Laboratory1969 - S. Chandrasekhar, University of Chicago1970 - Arthur L. Schawlow, Stanford University1971 - Edwin Land, Polaroid Corporation1972 - Robert B. Leighton, California Institute of Technology1973 - Michael E. Fisher, Cornell University1974 - Steven Weinberg, Harvard University1975 - Riccardo Giacconi , Harvard University1976 - Britton Chance, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine1977 - Michael Tinkham, Harvard University1978 - Sidney Drell, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center1979 - William A. Nierenberg, Scripps Institute of Oceanography1980 - Edward C. Stone, California Institute of Technology1981 - Hans Frauenfelder, University of Illinois1982 - Karen McNally, Seismological Laboratory, California Institute of Technology and University of California, Santa Cruz1983 - Edward A. Frieman, Science Applications Inc., La Jolla, California1984 - David N. Schramm, University of Chicago1985 - Gerry Neugebauer, California Institute of Technology1986 - Leon M. Lederman, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory1987 - Clifford M. Will, Washington University in St. Louis1988 - Peter A. Franken, University of Arizona1989 - Robert J. Birgeneau, Massachusetts Institute of Technology1990 - Steven Chu, Stanford University1991 - Larry W. Esposito, University of Colorado Boulder1992 - Kip S. Thorne, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena1993 - Richard E. Smalley, Rice University1994 - Sheldon Lee Glashow, Harvard University1995 - Joseph Henry Taylor, Princeton University1996 - Carl E. Wieman, University of Colorado1997 - H. Eugene Stanley, Boston University1998 - Douglas D. Osheroff, Stanford University1999 - Wayne H. Knox, Bell Laboratories2000 - William D. Phillips, National Institute of Standards and Technology2001 - 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 Washington2010 - Not Awarded2011 - 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 Bristol2016 - Derek Muller, Veritasium You Tube Channel, CatalystIt 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.
