Los Alamos lab researchers have manufactured a new substance that conducts huge amounts of electricity without resistance -- a potential benefit in the development of a wide range of products from medical diagnosis devices, new motors, and high-speed trains.
"We have hit a new milestone in superconductivity," said Dean Peterson, director of the lab's Superconductivity Technology Center. "I think we're on our way to a product that has great commercial value."
The breakthrough was described by Los Alamos researcher Steve Foltyn at the Materials Research Society meeting in San Francisco. It attracted worldwide media attention and accolades from the scientific community. Society President Julia Phillips, a researcher at AT&T Bell Laboratories, said the performance of the Los Alamos material meets goals that had been the "holy grail" of the field.
Four of eight 1994 recipients of the DOE's prestigious E.O. Lawrence Award are scientists at the Berkeley, Livermore, and Los Alamos labs.
Physicist George Smoot of Berkeley was honored for his discovery of variations in cosmic background radiation; Livermore's E. Michael Campbell and John Lindl, also physicists, shared an award for their contributions to inertial confinement fusion; and Los Alamos chemist Gregory Kubas won the award for his discovery of a new kind of chemical bonding.
In announcing the 1994 awards, Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary said, "The results of these winners' work clearly demonstrate the contributions that basic and applied research make to our nation -- to our economy, to our health and safety, and to our understanding of the universe around us."
The award honors the memory of UC physicist Ernest Orlando Lawrence.
The Federal Laboratory Consortium honors Livermore scientist Tom McEwan, inventor of the "radar on chip" technology, for excellence in transferring technology to private industry ... Charles W. "Chuck" McDonald moves from the Berkeley lab to the UC Laboratory Administration Office as manager of procurement and property management ... John Immele, director of the Los Alamos lab's Nuclear Weapons Technology Programs, is on a three-month change of station as a science adviser to Vic Reis, assistant secretary for Defense Programs at DOE headquarters in Washington, D.C ... Phillip Schultz is named the Livermore lab's new controller after serving nine months in an acting capacity ... Los Alamos scientist Robert Ecke is appointed a fellow in the American Physical Society ... Ron Kolb, former director of news and public affairs at the UC Office of the President, is the Berkeley lab's new head for communications.
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