Four Caltech Professors Electedto National Academy of Sciences
The new Caltech electees are Barry Barish, who is the Linde Professor of Physics and director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO); Jacqueline Barton, the Hanisch Memorial Professor and professor of chemistry; H. Jeff Kimble, the Valentine Professor and professor of physics; and Anatol Roshko, the Von Karman Professor of Aeronautics, Emeritus.
Barish is an experimental high-energy physicist who has been involved through the years with some of the highest-profile projects in the United States and abroad. A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, Barish has been at Caltech since 1963. He was leader of one of the large detectors for the Superconducting Supercollider before the project was cancelled, searched for magnetic monopoles in the experiment below the Gran Sasso Mountain in Italy, performed several experiments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and is presently involved in the neutrino experiment inside the Soudan Underground Mine in Minnesota.
He was also responsible for the definitive experiment at Fermilab that provided evidence of the "weak neutral current," the linchpin of the electroweak theory for which Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam, and Steven Weinberg won the Nobel Prize.
Since 1994 Barish has worked on the LIGO project, an NSF-funded collaboration between Caltech and MIT for detecting gravitational waves from exotic sources such as colliding black holes. He has been director of the project since 1997.
Barton joined the Caltech faculty in the fall of 1989, where she has pioneered the application of transition metal complexes as tools to probe recognition and reactions of double-helical DNA. These synthetic transition metal complexes have been useful in elucidating fundamental chemical principles that govern the recognition of nucleic acids, in developing luminescent and photochemical reagents as new diagnostic tools, and in laying a foundation for the design of novel chemotherapeutics and biosensors.
With these transition metal probes, she has also carried out seminal studies to elucidate electron transfer chemistry mediated by the DNA double helix. This work provides a completely new approach to the study of DNA structure and dynamics and may be critical to understanding the chemical consequences of radical damage to DNA within the cell.
An alumna of Barnard College, Barton obtained her PhD in chemistry from Columbia University, and was on the faculty there before joining Caltech. She also serves as a director of the Dow Chemical Company and GeneOhm Sciences. Barton is a past recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (1991) and she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991) and the American Philosophical Society (1999).
Among the awards she has received are the National Science Foundation Waterman Award (1985), the American Chemical Society (ACS) Award in Pure Chemistry (1988), the ACS Tolman Medal (1994), and the ACS Nichols Medal (1997). She is the recipient of several honorary doctorates of science and university medals.
Kimble is an expert in quantum optics and has made groundbreaking discoveries relating to quantum measurement and to the new science of quantum information. A continuing theme of his research has been the generation and application of novel quantum states of the electromagnetic field, such as "squeezed" and "antibunched" light. By utilizing such states, in 1987 his group made the first measurement showing sensitivity beyond the standard quantum limit.
By further exploiting the basic techniques of light squeezing, Kimble and his Caltech colleagues were able to achieve the first demonstration of the original 1935 proposal by Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (or "EPR") involving the quantum correlations of spatially extended quantum systems. This work became the foundation for the attainment of unconditional quantum teleportation by Kimble's group in 1998.
Kimble and his colleagues have also worked for many years to achieve new forms of nonlinear interactions at the level of single photons and individual atoms. By utilizing techniques from the field of cavity quantum electrodynamics that Kimble has pioneered, in 1995 his group at Caltech demonstrated a quantum phase gate that operated at the single photon level and was suitable for the implementation of rudimentary quantum logic. This work was seminal in establishing the experimental foundations of quantum information science.
Kimble and his colleagues have also made important contributions to theoretical physics, including a new paradigm for the realization of distributed quantum networks.
He is a 1978 graduate of the University of Rochester. Before joining the Caltech faculty in 1989, he held the Sid Richardson Regents' Chair in Physics at the University of Texas at Austin. He is winner of the Albert A. Michelson Medal of the Franklin Institute (1990) and co-recipient of the Einstein Prize for Laser Science (1989). In 1996 Kimble received the Max Born Award of the Optical Society of America.
Roshko is known for his research in several areas of gas dynamics and fluid mechanics. He has made contributions to problems of separated flow, bluff-body aerodynamics, shock-wave boundary-layer interactions, shock-tube technology, and the structure of turbulent shear flows.
A native of Canada, Roshko earned his doctorate from Caltech in 1952 and has spent his career at the Institute. He also served as acting director of Caltech's Graduate Aeronautical Labs from 1985 to 1987.
Already a member of the National Academy of Engineering, Roshko is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute, and an honorary member of the Indian Academy of Sciences. He is a founding director of Wind Engineering Research, Inc.
In all, 72 new members and 15 foreign associates were elected, bringing the total number of active members to 1,907. This year's four additions to the National Academy of Sciences bring to 67 the number of living Caltech professors and professors emeritus who have earned the prestigious honor. The National Academy, established in 1863 by President Lincoln, acts as an advisory body for the federal government on scientific matters.
Contact: Robert Tindol (626) 395-3631
