Daniel Altschuler receives the Andrew Gemant Award 2010
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The 2010 Andrew Gemant Award 2010 was presented to Dr. Daniel Altschuler for his decades of work bringing the excitement and beauty of physics and astronomy to the 4 million people of Puerto Rico, through his creation of The Angel Ramos Foundation Visitor Center at the Arecibo Observatory, his books and his own translations of them into Spanish, and through his popular articles, blog, and workshops for teachers and journalists.
The Andrew W. Gemant Award is a prize awarded by the American Institute of Physics to a person who has made substantial cultural, artistic, or humanistic contributions to physics.
(http://www.aip.org/aip/awards/gemawd.html
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Gemant_Award).
The award, made possible by a bequest of Andrew Gemant to the AIP, is given annually in recognition of the accomplishments of a person who has made significant contributions to the cultural, artistic, or humanistic dimension of physics.б Previous winners include Philip Morrison, Freeman Dyson, Abraham Pais, Robert R. Wilson, Alan Lightman, Steven Weinberg, Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene, and Andrew Fraknoi.
The award was presented to Daniel at the Summer 2010 meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Miami, where he presented the annual Gemant Award lecture entitled, "Science, Pseudoscience and Education".
Daniel was a long-term member of the NAIC staff at Arecibo, and served as Observatory Director between 1991 to 2003. This period saw many on-site developments, including the Gregorian Dome Upgrade of the 305-m telescope, and the construction and launching of the "Angel Ramos Foundation" Visitor Center, part of the reason for which he is being
recognized by the AIP.б He is now a Professor in the Department of Physics at the College of Natural Sciences of the University of Puerto Rico (Rio Piedras Campus).
