Two Caltech Alums Awarded National Medal of Science
Caltech alumni Berni Alder, PhD ‘52, and James Gunn, PhD ‘66, have been chosen to receive the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest scientific honor. They are among nine scientists and engineers selected this year to receive the award, which President Barack Obama will present in a White House ceremony on October 7.
Gunn, a professor of astronomy at Princeton University, was selected for his contributions to modern stargazing, from theory to observation to gadget building. Alder, a retired physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is being honored for his seminal work in molecular dynamics, a type of computer simulation used for studying the motions and interactions of atoms over time.