December 8, 2004

The Gregori Aminoff Prize Goes to Prominent NSLS User David Mao

David Mao, a frequent NSLS user, has been awarded the 2005 Gregori Aminoff Prize in Crystallography by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Mao received this prestigious award “for pioneering research of materials at ultrahigh pressures and temperatures.”

David Mao

“I am very honored to receive this award for my work using high-pressure diamond anvil cell devices,” said Mao, a researcher with the Geophysical Laboratory at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. “We are at the exciting moment when high-pressure research may emerge as a major branch of modern science. Groundbreaking high-pressure experiments reveal numerous new phenomena of revolutionary importance for a wide range of problems in the physical sciences. Fortunately, with modern synchrotron light sources, these phenomena can be directly probed and studied at extreme pressure conditions.”

He continued, “There are so many colleagues at the Geophysical Laboratory to whom I am in debt for this development, particularly Larry Finger and Charlie Prewitt, from whom I learned structural crystallography; and Bill Bassett, Peter Bell, and Rus Hemley, who I joined in developing this new high-pressure field. I must also thank Chi-chang Kao at the NSLS, who taught me how to study electron and phonon dynamics of crystals by inelastic x-ray scattering spectroscopy.”

The Aminoff prize is given out annually to scientists or research groups (of three people or fewer) who have made a major contribution to the field of crystallography. It consists of a gold medal, a diploma, and a $10,000 cash award, and is named after Swedish crystallographer Gregori Aminoff, the first scientist to introduce crystallography to Sweden.

Mao will formally accept the prize from His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf, the king of Sweden, at the Royal Swedish Academy’s annual meeting, to be held June 8, 2005. Following the ceremony, Mao will present a lecture on his work.

ARTICLE BY: Laura Mgrdichian