Bruce Mason to receive 2025 Lillian McDermott Medal

The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) is pleased to announce Bruce Mason as the 2025 recipient of the Lillian McDermott Medal, to be awarded at the 2025 Winter Meeting. This award recognizes those who are passionate and tenacious about improving the teaching and learning of physics and have made intellectually creative contributions in this area.

Mason is specifically recognized “for his pioneering work on digital libraries and curriculum development, including ComPADRE as well as Physlet-based and Open Source Physics-based curricular development, all of which has influenced hundreds of teachers and thousands of students around the world“.

Regarding his receipt of the McDermott Medal, Mason said, “I am honored by this recognition by the AAPT and those who have nominated me for it. Any successes of the projects supported by ComPADRE are due to the many individuals and groups who have worked on them. My technical and editorial colleagues have made it all possible.”

Mason got his B.A. in Physics from Oberlin College, graduating in 1980 with High Honors. Both his M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics were completed at the University of Maryland, College Park.

His enthusiasm for physics and physics education were apparent throughout his undergraduate career, including his senior year experience as a teaching assistant for the electronics laboratory and his thesis project on building a cloud chamber.

Mason recognized the potential of the internet early on working on behalf of MERLOT in 2000 as the physics editor, a position he held for about a decade, cataloging and organizing an extensive collection of physics software and curricular material. His talent as digital library innovator was recognized by the physics societies and he was recruited by the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), the American Institute of Physics (AIP), and the American Astronomical Society (AAS) to lead the development of a multi-society National Science Digital Library (NSDL) known as ComPADRE gaining him an international reputation as a knowledgeable and skilled administrator/teacher. He was asked to serve as a member of the Board for the European Multimedia in Physics Teaching and Learning (MPTL) conference series. He was also asked to serve on the international organizing committee for Groupe International de Recherche sur l'Enseignement de la Physique (GIREP) conferences.

In his capacity as the ComPADRE Principal Investigator and as a leading representative of the US digital library initiative, Mason was often invited to give papers at international conferences describing his work and the work of others developing digital education.

After his work in theoretical condensed matter physics and winning several University of Oklahoma awards for his excellence in teaching, Mason’s interests shifted to the use of computers and information technology in physics education. Mason joined AAPT in 2000 and became the director of the ComPADRE network of educational resource collections (http://www.compadre.org), an ecosystem of electronic resources and services of the American Association of Physics Teachers that hosts the online components and proceedings of the annual Physics Education Research Conference and the Advanced Labs Topical Conferences, and the Open Source Physics community. Recent projects supported by ComPADRE include the Partnership for Integration of Computation into Undergraduate Physics, PICUP and the Living Physics Portal for community development and sharing of learning resources for introductory physics for life sciences majors courses.

Mason and his colleagues have published several peer-reviewed papers on ComPADRE and its various subsites in The Physics Teacher, the European Journal of Physics, Nouvo Cimento C, the Journal of Chemical Education, and Computers in Science and Engineering.

Mason is currently AAPT’s ePublications editor. For the past two years, he has been leading an effort to update the ComPADRE IT infrastructure and to enhance the curation of the posted content, accessed by hundreds of thousands of users each year. His work on ComPADRE has resulted in his being elected as Fellow of both the American Physical Society and the American Association of Physics Teachers.

About the Award
The Lillian McDermott Medal recognizes those who are passionate and tenacious about improving the teaching and learning of physics and have made intellectually creative contributions in this area. The recipient delivers an address at an AAPT Summer Meeting and receives a monetary award, the McDermott Medal, an Award Certificate, and travel expenses to the meeting.

About AAPT
The AAPT is the premier national organization and authority on physics and physical science education with members worldwide. Our mission is to advance the greater good through physics education. We provide our members with many opportunities for professional development, communication, and student enrichment. We serve the larger community through a variety of programs and publications. AAPT was founded in 1930 and is headquartered in the American Center for Physics in College Park, Maryland.

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