Physics

Nuclear physicist Joseph Hamilton (Daniel Dubois / Vanderbilt) The year has gotten off to a good start for modern-day alchemists like Vanderbilt physicists Joe Hamilton and A.V. Ramayya who are engaged in the extremely challenging scientific endeavor of extending the periodic table by creating new… Read More

The result of one of John Daniel's early experiments: X-rays of the hands of three generations of one family, circa 1900. (image courtesy of Vanderbilt University Special Collections & University Archives) Following German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays in late 1895, scientists around the world began experimenting with the… Read More

The smallest exoplanets yet discovered orbit a dwarf star almost identical to Barnard’s star, one of the Sun’s nearest neighbors. The similarity helped the astronomers calculate the size of the distant planets. Read More

Fourteen Vanderbilt researchers have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Read More

The College of Arts and Science honored four members of its community Dec. 6 for excelling in graduate teaching and mentoring. Farhana Loonat (Vanderbilt University) Farhana Loonat (political science) received the award for outstanding teaching assistant, and Matt Eatough (English) was honored as outstanding teacher. These awards… Read More

Physics professor Joseph H. Hamilton has been elected as a member of the Academia Europaea, a non-governmental association that serves as a European academy of arts and sciences. Read More

  Vanderbilt's virtual control room for the CMS detector that allows scientists and students to participate in meetings, monitor the experiment and analyze the data that it produces (John Russell / Vanderbilt University) After the most complete search yet, the world’s largest atom smasher, the… Read More

Greg Barz (Vanderbilt) Greg Barz, associate professor of ethnomusicology, has co-edited a volume of essays, The Culture of AIDS in Africa: Hope and Healing Through Music and the Arts, published by Oxford University Press. Anne Davis, instructor in law, has been named managing attorney of the Southern Environmental Law… Read More

Electrical engineer and physicist Yaqiong Xu has received a prestigious career development award to study a new class of molecules called nanobiohybrids. Read More

A team of scientists has taken a major step toward developing robot biologists. They have shown that their system, the Automated Biology Explorer, can solve a complicated biology problem from scratch. Read More

Astronomer David Weintraub has given introductory astronomy a “CSI” format by following the scientific evidence that gives us the age of the universe and has put this in a popular science book. Read More

Interfacial scientist thrives on moment of discovery Erin Rericha (Lauren Owens/Vanderbilt) Erin Rericha considers herself an interfacial scientist. The new assistant professor of physics explained that she has “a bit of a split personality.” “I am trained as a condensed matter physicist,” she said, “and I spent… Read More

Tracy Barrett (Vanderbilt) Tracy Barrett, senior lecturer in Italian, has written Dark of the Moon, a re-telling of the Theseus myth for young adult readers, published by Harcourt Children’s Books. Leonard Bickman, the Betts Chair and professor… Read More

David Ernst (Vanderbilt University) Vanderbilt’s David Ernst, professor of physics and astronomy, has won the Francis G. Slack Award from the Southeast Section of the American Physical Society. The award is given for “excellence in service to physics in the Southeast.”… Read More

Physicist David Ernst has received a 2011 Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science award for his mentorship of underrepresented minority students. Read More

David Ernst, professor of physics at Vanderbilt and an adjunct professor at Fisk University, has won the 2011 Distinguished Professional Mentor Award from the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS). Read More

A team of Vanderbilt engineers have developed a rapid and low-cost imprinting process that can stamp out a variety of devices that have unique optical, electrical, chemical and mechanical properties. Read More

Vanderbilt University Professor of Astronomy David Weintraub will present the second half of a lecture series titled "How Old is the Universe?" at the Vanderbilt Dyer Observatory on Tuesday, May 3, from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Read More

I’ve always been fascinated, and occasionally frustrated, by the tendency of string, yarn, rope and wire – any thing that is long, thin and flexible – to knot and tangle. Fields Medal winner Vaughan F.R. Jones Clearly, I’m not the only one. Mathematicians have been studying knots… Read More

There is a new dark-horse entry in the cosmological sweepstakes. Cosmologists Alan Guth, left, and Paul Steinhardt In the last 50 years, the Big Bang theory has gradually become the standard scientific model for how the universe began and has been written into the grade school science… Read More