Former Lab Director Samuel Aronson Named Senior Scientist Emeritus
September 7, 2017
On the basis of his distinguished career at Brookhaven, former Lab Director Samuel Aronson was named senior scientist emeritus upon his retirement in January 2015.
After completing his undergraduate training in physics at Columbia in 1964 and receiving his Ph.D. in experimental particle physics from Princeton in 1968, Aronson joined the Enrico Fermi Institute of the University of Chicago, working at Argonne and Fermilab, followed by research and teaching at the University of Wisconsin.
Aronson came to the Laboratory in 1978 as an associate physicist in the Accelerator Department to work on the ISABELLE project. In 1982, he was promoted to tenured physicist and transferred to the Physics Department, where he worked on experiments at Fermilab and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). He chaired the Physics Department from 2001 until 2005, when he became associate laboratory director for the High Energy and Nuclear Physics Directorate. In 2006, Aronson was appointed Laboratory director, during which time he chaired the U.S. Department of Energy's National Lab Directors' Council. In 2012, he stepped down to serve as a senior advisor to the director and then in 2013 was named Director of the RIKEN BNL Research Center. Aronson also served as president of the American Physical Society in 2015.
In writing to congratulate Aronson, Gibbs reflected on many of Aronson's accomplishments, including his leadership on the construction of the innovative U-LAr central calorimeter, which was "Brookhaven's most important contribution to the D0 experiment at Fermilab that eventually co-discovered the top quark." Gibbs also noted that Aronson "deserves a major share of the credit for the brilliant success of the PHENIX experiment," for which Aronson served as project director.
In considering Aronson's tenure as director, Gibbs said, "Aside from the remarkable success of the RHIC program, the CFN [Center for Functional Nanomaterials] construction was completed and the NSLS-II [National Synchrotron Light Source II] and ISB [Interdisciplinary Science Building] were approved and the construction initiated."
"My nearly 40 years at Brookhaven have given me the opportunity to work in both research and management and to interact with the local civic community, local and national governments, and the international scientific community," said Aronson. "As an emeritus scientist, I have stayed involved in science and technology at the Lab and at Stony Brook University."
Meet 12 other scientists who have received emeritus status
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