The Arthur H. Compton award was established in 1995 by the APS Users Organization (APSUO) to recognize an important technical or scientific accomplishment at, or beneficial to, the Advanced Photon Source. The award consists of a certificate and $2500.

The awards are generally made at APS User Meetings, which are held approximately every 18 months. A call for nominations is sent at least six months prior to the meeting, and the winner is notified at least two months in advance and invited to give an award lecture at the meeting.

Compton was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1927 for discovering and explaining changes in x-ray wavelengths resulting from x-ray collisions with electrons, the so-called Compton effect. This important discovery in 1922 confirmed the dual nature (wave and particle) of electromagnetic radiation. A Ph.D. from Princeton University, Compton held many prominent positions including professor of physics at The University of Chicago and chairman of the committee of the National Academy of Sciences that studied the military potential of atomic energy. His position on that committee made Compton instrumental in initiating the Manhattan Project, which created the first atomic bomb.

Arthur H. Compton Awards

Award Date	Awardee(s)	Recognized for:
October 1995	Nikolai Vinokurov Klaus Halbach	Development of hybrid undulator x-ray sources.
April 1997	Philip M. Platzman Peter M. Eisenberger	Theoretical and experimental contributions to the fields of x-ray scattering.
October 1998	Donald H. Bilderback Andreas K. Freund Gordon S. Knapp Dennis M. Mills	Development of cryogenically cooled x-ray optics for handling undulator x-ray beams.
May 2000	Sunil K. Sinha	Development of the general theory of off-specular surface scattering
October 21	Wayne A. Hendrickson	Development and use of multiwavelength anomalous diffraction (MAD) methods.

 

 

Wayne Hendrickson, Columbia University (far right) was awarded the fifth APS Arthur H. Compton Award for his important contributions to the development of multiwavelength anomalous diffraction as a technique for structural biology research using synchrotron radiation. Hendrickson was joined by (from left to right) Gopal Shenoy, Eric Isaacs, and David Moncton as he was presented with his award.