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UCSD PHYSICIST AWARDED TWO MAJOR PRIZES

A professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego has been awarded two prestigious prizes in his discipline for achievements and contributions to the scientific understanding of new materials.

M. Brian Maple, the Bernd T. Matthias professor of physics at UCSD, will receive this year's James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials from the American Physical Society at the scientific organization's March 20 to 24 meeting in Minneapolis. The $5,000 prize recognizes and encourages outstanding achievements in the science and application of new materials. Maple was cited by the prize committee for his "synthesis of novel d and f electron materials and for the study of their physics."

A student of the renowned UCSD physicist Bernd T. Matthias, Maple was also awarded this year's Bernd T. Matthias Prize on February 21 at the Sixth International Conference on the Materials and Mechanisms of High Temperature Superconductors and High Temperature Superconductivity in Houston. He was cited by the committee that selected him for the $5,000 award for his "pioneering contribution to the understanding of superconducting materials in general, and interplay between magnetism and superconductivity in particular."

An expert on high-temperature superconductors-materials that lose all resistance to electricity at commercially attainable, cold temperatures-Maple presided over the celebrated high-temperature superconductivity session, which was dubbed by some journalists the "Woodstock of Physics," during the American Physical Society's March meeting in 1987. His research interests also include magnetism, strongly correlated electron phenomena, high- pressure physics and surface science. He received bachelor's degrees in mathematics and physics at San Diego State University in 1963 and his doctorate in physics from UCSD in 1969. He received the Excellence in Teaching Award from UCSD in 1983 and was named Distinguished Alumnus of the Year at UCSD in 1987.