Brookhaven Lab Physicist Victor Emery Elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

UPTON, NY -Victor Emery, a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, joins Woody Allen; Richard Avedon; Stephen Sondheim; Madeline Albright; His Majesty Juan Carlos I, the King of Spain; and others as members of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (AAAS).

All are among the 211 distinguished scholars, scientists, artists, business executives, educators and public officials elected to membership this year in the AAAS. Composed of 185 Fellows and 26 Foreign Honorary Members from 14 nations, the new membership will be welcomed to the Society at a ceremony at the Academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 13.

"I am delighted that my accomplishments in physics have earned me the right to be in such good company," Emery said.

Founded during the American Revolution by John Adams and other leaders of the new nation, the Academy was chartered "to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people."

George Washington, Ben Franklin, Daniel Webster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill are among the society's past members. The current membership of 3,600 Fellows and 600 Foreign Honorary Members includes more than 150 Nobel laureates, 50 Pulitzer Prize winners, and ten Brookhaven Lab scientists. -more-

Page 2 - Brookhaven Lab Scientist Victor Emery Elected a Fellow of AAAS

Emery has made significant contributions to a variety of topics in solid-state physics, and he is one of the world's leading theorists in superconductivity and the study of phase transitions, in which substances change among liquid, solid and gas.

Earlier this year, Emery shared the Oliver E. Buckley Prize in Condensed Matter Physics with Alan H. Luther of NORDITA in Denmark for "their fundamental contribution to the theory of interacting electrons in one-dimension." Today, this theory is believed to be of crucial importance for understanding high-temperature superconductors.

Born in England, Emery earned a B.Sc. in mathematics from the University of London in 1954, and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Manchester in 1957. Emery was a research associate in the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, from 1957 to 1959, and a Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley, from 1959 to 1960, later becoming a visiting assistant professor, from 1963 to 1964. From 1960 to 1963, he was also a lecturer at the University of Birmingham, England.

Emery started his career at Brookhaven in 1964 as an associate physicist. He received tenure at Brookhaven in 1967 and was promoted to senior physicist in 1972. He served as the associate chair of the Laboratory's Physics Department, 1981-1985. In 1995, he received Brookhaven's Distinguished Research and Development Award.

The Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory conducts research in the physical, biomedical, and environmental sciences, as well as in energy technologies. Brookhaven also builds and operates major facilities available to university, industrial, and government scientists. The Laboratory is managed by Brookhaven Science Associates, a corporation founded by Stony Brook University and Battelle, a nonprofit applied science and technology organization.

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NOTE TO LOCAL EDITORS: Victor Emery is a resident of Shoreham, NY.