Nadya Mason Recognized as 2025 Recipient of the Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
College Park, Maryland, United States, April 10, 2025—The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) today announced today that physicist Nadya Mason has been selected to receive the 2025 Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award. Dr. Mason, who currently serves as Dean of the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, is being recognized with the award for outstanding contributions to physics and for effectively communicating those contributions to physics educators. The award will be presented at a Ceremonial Session of the AAPT 2025 Summer Meeting.
Dr. Mason is recognized “For her outstanding communication to physics educators and wide-ranging impact on students and faculty across the country, particularly those from underrepresented groups in physics, and for her pivotal work in launching the APS National Mentoring Community, and for her work with the National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee.”
Dr. Mason is an experimental physicist who works at the intersection of complex materials, superconductivity, and nanotechnology, an area relevant to applications involving nanoscale and quantum computing elements. She is particularly recognized for her work elucidating the electronic properties of low-dimensional correlated materials, such as hybrid superconducting devices containing metal, graphene, or topological insulators. She is a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Science.
In addition to her teaching and research, Dr. Mason’s passion for communicating physics to a wide variety of audiences through public lectures, a TED talk, on television, and at conferences, her teaching and advising of students, her work on increasing diversity in the physical sciences through mentoring, and her continuous encouragement of and engagement with underrepresented students and educators in physics make her an exemplary choice for this award. Given her research accomplishments in nanoscale systems and her role in the National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee, she will receive this award during the Year of Quantum.
Dr. Mason achieved her B.S. in physics at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (1995) and her Ph.D. in physics at Stanford University, Palo Alto CA (2001). She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University, Cambridge MA (2001-2002) and a member of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University (2002-2005).
As a member and then chair of the APS Committee on Minorities, her leadership was pivotal in launching the National Mentoring Community (NMC), which works to “provide historically underrepresented undergraduate and graduate students in physics with professional development and resources, by pairing Black/African, Latinx, and Indigenous students with mentors.”
Dr. Mason is a role-model and a champion of high school, undergraduate, and graduate students, teachers, and faculty from under-represented groups in STEM and academia. She generously gives of her time to groups such as the National Society of Black Physicists, the Inclusive Graduate Education Network, and the APS Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Alliance (APS-IDEA). Dr. Mason’s keynotes, plenary talks, and participation in discussions and panels have reached hundreds of students and faculty.
Her outreach activities encourage more students to go into STEM fields. Her TED Talk, “How to spark your curiosity, scientifically,” has been viewed over 450,000 times. She produced, “Magnetic Fields,” a 4-part scripted scientific web series, and regularly appeared as a science presenter on WCIA TV Channel 3 in Champaign, IL. Mason has been featured on the PBS television production of “Revolutions: The Ideas that Changed the World” and in the Science Storms Exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, IL.
About the Award
The Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award is given in memory of Floyd K. Richtmyer, distinguished physicist, teacher, and administrator. Professor Richtmyer was one of the founders of AAPT and served as its president. As a teacher, author, research worker, and dean, he was the guide for many young physicists who became leaders of American science and has had a wide influence on the development of physics in the United States. The award has been given since 1941 to a person who has made outstanding contributions to physics and effectively communicated those contributions to physics educators.
About AAPT
The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) is the premier international organization for physics educators, physicists, and industrial scientists—with members worldwide. Dedicated to enhancing the understanding and appreciation of physics through teaching, AAPT provides awards, publications, and programs that encourage practical application of physics principles, support continuing professional development, and reward excellence in physics education. AAPT was founded in 1930 and is headquartered in the American Center for Physics in College Park, Maryland.
For more information contact David Wolfe, Director of Communications, dwolfe@aapt.org, (301) 209-3327, (301) 209-0845 (Fax), www.aapt.org.
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