Professor receives prestigious physics honor

Giacinto Scoles, the Donner Professor of Science and a member of the University's chemistry department, is one of two recipients of the 2006 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics, one of the oldest and most prestigious science awards in the world.

The 182-year-old award, which honors scientists who have benefited humanity or launched new fields, will be presented in Philadelphia on April 27.

"Of course I am happy about it," Scoles said. "There are very few things that are left serendipitously in front of a scientist. You have to be able to see what other people cannot see."

Scoles, who joined the University in 1987, invented a new way to capture and study gas molecules. Traditionally, molecules were studied at extremely cold temperatures or suspended in a vacuum, but both methods were far from perfect.

"He has a hybrid technique that joins the advantages of these two," Ozgur Birer, one of Scoles' research assistants, said. "He takes a pure helium gas, expands this gas through a very small and very cold nozzle into a vacuum, putting high pressure on it. It's extremely cold and there are no interactions."

Scoles first started this research around 1990 after one of his students came up with the idea. What led him to this point, he said, was "a long chain of events."

He credits his colleagues with much of his success, especially former University professor Kevin Lehmann, who left last year to teach at the University of Virginia.

"We collaborated for many, many years," Scoles said. "I doubt I would have been recognized now without him. We cannot do anything by ourselves; we build on the shoulders of other people."

Birer, who said Scoles is both "caring" and "a nice mentor to have," noted that his research interests and scientific knowledge are not limited.

"He's in diversified research," Birer said. "He has a broad sense of understanding of science."

And Scoles isn't done yet.

"The simple things have already been done and now the name of the game is complicated," Scoles said. "There is nothing simple about life, but it must be studied."