Klopsteg Memorial Award

Paul E. Klopsteg, a founder and former president of AAPT

Established 1990

Named for Paul E. Klopsteg, a principal founder, a former AAPT President, and a long-time member of AAPT, the Klopsteg Memorial Lecture Award recognizes outstanding communication of the excitement of contemporary physics to the general public. The recipient delivers the Klopsteg Lecture at an AAPT Summer Meeting on a topic of current significance and at a level suitable for a non-specialist audience and receives a monetary award, an Award Certificate, and travel expenses to the meeting. Self-nomination is not appropriate for this award. Preference in the selection of the recipient will be given to members of AAPT.

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Award Winners

Listed below are previous winners of the Klopsteg Memorial Award as well as information about the address they gave (if applicable).

2011

James E. Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

"Halting Human-Made Climate Change: The Case for Young People and Nature"

2010

Robert Scherrer, Vanderbilt University

"Science and Science Fiction"

2009

Lee Smolin, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

Address: "The Role of the Scientist as a Public Intellectual"

2008

Michio Kaku, City University of New York, New York, NY

Address: "Physics of the Impossible"

2007

Neil de Grasse Tyson, Astrophysicist and Director, Hayden Planetarium, American Museum of Natural History, New York

Address: "Adventures in Science Illiteracy"

2006

Lisa Randall, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Address: "Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions"

2005

Wendy Freedman, Carnegie Observatories, Pasadena, CA

Address: "The Accelerating Universe"

2004

Anton Zeilinger, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

Address: "Quantum Experiments: From Philosophical Curiosity to a New Technology"

2003

Sylvester Gates, University of Maryland, College Park, MD

Address: "Why Einstein Would Love Spaghetti in Fundamental Physics"

2002

Barry C. Barish, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA

Address: "Catching the Waves with LIGO"

2001

Virginia Trimble, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA

Address: "Cosmology: Man's Place in the Universe"

2000

Terrence P. Walker, The Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH

Address: "The Big Bang: Seeing Back to the Beginning"

1999

Michael S. Turner, University of Chicago

Address: "Cosmology: From Quantum Fluctuations to the Expanding Universe"

1998

Sidney R. Nagel, The James Franck Institute

Address: "Physics at the Breakfast Table - Or Waking Up to Physics"

1997

Max Dresden, Stanford University and Stanford Linear Accelerator

Address: "Scales, Macroscopic, Microscopic, Mesoscopic: Their Autonomy and Interrelation"

1996

Margaret Geller, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Optical Infrared Astronomy Division

1995

Peter Franken, University of Arizona

Address: "Municipal Waste, Recycling, and Nuclear Garbage"

1994

David Mermin, Cornell University

Address: "More Quantum Magic"

1993

Charles P. Bean, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York

Address: "An Invitation to Table-Top Physics Inside and in the Open Air"

1992

Gabriel Wienreich, University of Michigan at Anne Arbor

Address: "What Science Knows about Violins And What It Doesn't Know," Am. J. Phys.61, 1067 (1993).

1991

Paul K. Hansman, University of California at Santa Barbara

Address: "Seeing Atoms with the New Generation of Microscopes," Am. J. Phys. 59, 1067 (1991).