UC San Diego Physicist to Receive Gothenburg Lise Meitner Award

Ivan Schuller, a distinguished professor of physics at UC San Diego, will receive the 2015 Gothenburg Lise Meitner Award for “creating the field of metallic superlattices and recognizing the impact of these materials on magnetism and superconductivity.”

Ivan Schuller

The Gothenburg Physics Center of Sweden awards the prize to a scientist who has made a breakthrough discovery in physics. Established in 2006 by the department of physics at the University of Gothenburg, the prize carries an honorarium of 3,000 euros (about $3,358).

Lise Meitner was a Jewish scientist who worked in Berlin from 1907 to 1938, when she fled to Sweden and continued her work in nuclear physics for another 20 years. She was part of the team that discovered nuclear fission. She also explained the cause for the Auger effect, but was overlooked for the Nobel Prize.

Schuller, a prize-winning physicist who joined UC San Diego in 1987 from Argonne National Laboratory, pursues several lines of inquiry in physics. His interests include the preparation, characterization and study of metallic superlattices, heterostructures, and nano-scale structures with the goal of understanding the connection between structure and physical properties, principally electrical transport, magnetism, superconductivity and mechanical properties. These are all important ingredients in modern electronics, information storage and sensor industries.

Schuller has also dedicated considerable effort to popularizing physics through public lectures and award-winning educational television and video.

Learn more about Schuller’s work and career.