October 21, 2002

Electronic newsroom

02-77

Brookhaven Lab Chemist to Receive Environmental Leadership Award From Southampton College

UPTON, NY - Peter Daum, an atmospheric chemist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, will be one of four recipients of Southampton College’s first annual environmental leadership awards. The four awardees will be honored at a dinner on October 24, at Atlantis Marine World in Riverhead.

The awardees will be recognized in various categories for their contributions and individual achievements in regionally important environmental programs. Daum will be recognized for his research; while Marty Shea, Town of Southampton, will be honored for environmental leadership in government; Anita Wright, Group for the South Fork, will be honored for efforts in education; and Lisanne Altmann, Long Island Power Authority, will be given the award for environmental leadership in industry. Each of the awardees will receive a plaque and a specially designed glass paperweight from Southampton College.

“I am pleased to receive this honor,” Daum said. “Almost all of my research at Brookhaven Lab has been done in the context of large, multi-agency programs. Brookhaven encourages interdisciplinary collaborations, so that we can take advantage of expertise in many fields to solve environmental problems.”

Daum’s research, since he joined Brookhaven in 1980, has focused on the effects of energy-related pollutants on the earth’s atmosphere, particularly photochemical air pollution, known as smog, as well as acid rain.

Daum was the principal scientist in the U.S. Department of Energy-funded expedition to the Middle East in the summer of 1991 to study the environmental effects of the oil-fires set by the retreating Iraqi Army during the Gulf War. He has led studies of smog in Nashville in 1995, New York City in 1996, Phoenix in 1998, Texas in 2000, and the Northeast U.S. in 2002. Results from these studies, particularly the Texas study, have had a direct impact on the strategies that are being proposed and implemented to control the nation’s air-quality problems.

After earning a B.S. in chemistry from the Drexel Institute of Technology in 1965 and a Ph.D. in chemisty from Michigan State University in 1969, Daum joined the faculty of Northern Illinois University, where he worked from 1969 to 1980. He came to Brookhaven in 1980 as a chemist in the Atomospheric Sciences Division. In 2000, he became head of that division.