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2009 Florida State Physics News

• Kirby Kemper named APS Outstanding Referee
• With NSF Grant, Researchers Put Their 'Spin' on Electron Research
• Book sheds light on the life of Paul Dirac
• Circus brings fun to physics
• Bernd Berg elected Secretary-Treasurer of DCOMP
• Ben Thayer Receives Prestigious National Fellowship in Theoretical Particle Physics
• Serbia lauds native son with award in physical science
• Two professors and a scholar/scientist named APS ‘Outstanding Referees’
• Physicists get first look at single top quarks
• A Pioneer in Physics: Philip J. Wyatt
• Physicist tapped to lead Electron Magnetic Resonance program
• Florida State physics professors join prestigious ranks of AAAS fellows
• Researchers named American Physical Society fellows

Two professors and a scholar/scientist named APS ‘Outstanding Referees’

Joseph F. "Jeff" Owens		Pedro Schlottmann		Alex Gurevich

The American Physical Society (APS) has honored three Florida State University physicists — Joseph F. “Jeff” Owens III, Pedro Schlottmann and Alex Gurevich — as “Outstanding Referees” for 2009.

Owens, an APS fellow, is the Guenter Schwarz Professor of Physics and associate dean for Research in Florida State’s College of Arts and Sciences; Schlottmann, a physics professor who began his career in Germany, is a Heisenberg fellow of the German National Science Foundation; and Gurevich, also an APS fellow, is a scholar/scientist and principal investigator in the Applied Superconductivity Center at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory.

The “Outstanding Referee” award, which is in its second year, is designed to recognize scientists who have been exceptionally helpful in assessing manuscripts for APS journals. Currently, the APS has about 42,000 active referees, and it honored 534 of them in 2008 and 340 of them in 2009. Most of those honored in 2008 and 2009 — what the APS refers to as the catch-up years of the award — have been dedicated reviewers for many years. In future years, the APS plans to honor about 130 referees per year. The 2009 honorees, which come from 35 countries, were chosen for the quality, number and timeliness of their reports, whether or not the scientists were members of the APS.

“Peer review is a vital endeavor within the academic and scientific enterprise,” said physics Chairman Mark Riley. “It is wonderful that APS has initiated this program to recognize these previously unsung heroes.”