The Richtmyer Memorial Award is an award for physics education, named for physicist Floyd K. Richtmyer and given annually by the American Association of Physics Teachers. Its recipients include over 15 Nobel Prize winners.
Establishment and award criteria Floyd T. Richtmyer (1881–1939) was one of the first presidents of the American Association of Physics Teachers and his work helped shape the development of physics in the United States. The Richtmyer Award was established in 1941, and is typically given to educators who have made outstanding contributions as teachers in their fields. It is awarded to those who have not only produced important current research in physics, but to those who have, by means of communication to both students and other educators, imparted information and motivation to participants in the field. The effective use of a teaching method in order to pass on information, and to stimulate interest in physics, is seen as being worthy of recognition in its own right, in addition to the importance of the production of new research. Recipients of the award deliver a Keynote Address, the annual Richtmyer Lecture, which is designed for communication with non-specialist audiences, during the AAPT Winter Meeting.
Recipients Past recipients of the award include "a long list of giants in the field of physics" such as UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau (1989); Steven Chu of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (1990), who also is a UC Berkeley professor of physics and a physics Nobelist, and who has been the 12th United States Secretary of Energy since 2009; and physicists Charles Townes (1959), Emilio Segrè (1957), J. Robert Oppenheimer (1947), and Nobel prize winner Carl Wieman of the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1996. Since its foundation in 1941, the following scientists from a wide number of institutions have received this award: Source: American Association of Physics Teachers
1941 - Arthur H. Compton, University of Chicago 1942 - Gordon Ferrie Hull, Dartmouth College 1944 - Karl K. Darrow, Columbia University 1945 - I.I. Rabi, Columbia University 1946 - Paul E. Klopsteg, Northwestern University 1947 - J.R. Oppenheimer, University of California 1948 - Homer L. Dodge, Norwich University 1949 - Lee A. DuBridge, California Institute of Technology 1950 - John H. Van Vleck, Harvard University 1951 - John C. Slater, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1952 - Enrico Fermi, University of Chicago 1953 - Edward M. Purcell, Harvard University 1954 - John A. Wheeler, Princeton University 1955 - Eugene P. Wigner, Princeton University 1956 - Walter H. Brattain, Bell Telephone Laboratories 1957 - Emilio Segre, University of California 1958 - Philip Morrison, Cornell University 1959 - Charles H. Townes, Columbia University 1960 - James A. Van Allen, State University of Iowa 1961 - William A. Fowler, California Institute of Technology 1962 - Thomas Gold, Cornell University 1963 - Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky, Stanford University 1964 - Fred Hoyle, Cambridge University 1965 - William M. Fairbank, Stanford University 1966 - Murray Gell-Mann, California Institute of Technology 1967 - Robert H. Dicke, Princeton University 1968 - Robert R. Wilson, National Accelerator Laboratory 1969 - S. Chandrasekhar, University of Chicago 1970 - Arthur L. Schawlow, Stanford University 1971 - Edwin Land, Polaroid Corporation 1972 - Robert B. Leighton, California Institute of Technology 1973 - Michael E. Fisher, Cornell University 1974 - Steven Weinberg, Harvard University 1975 - Riccardo Giacconi, Harvard University 1976 - Britton Chance, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine 1977 - Michael Tinkham, Harvard University 1978 - Sidney Drell, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center 1979 - William A. Nierenberg, Scripps Institute of Oceanography 1980 - Edward C. Stone, California Institute of Technology 1981 - Hans Frauenfelder, University of Illinois 1982 - Karen McNally, Seismological Laboratory, California Institute of Technology and University of California, Santa Cruz 1983 - Edward A. Frieman, Science Applications Inc., La Jolla, California 1984 - David N. Schramm, University of Chicago 1985 - Gerry Neugebauer, California Institute of Technology 1986 - Leon M. Lederman, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory 1987 - Clifford M. Will, Washington University in St. Louis 1988 - Peter A. Franken, University of Arizona 1989 - Robert J. Birgeneau, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1990 - Steven Chu, Stanford University 1991 - Larry W. Esposito, University of Colorado Boulder 1992 - Kip S. Thorne, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena 1993 - Richard E. Smalley, Rice University 1994 - Sheldon Glashow, Harvard University 1995 - Joseph Henry Taylor, Princeton University 1996 - Carl E. Wieman, University of Colorado 1997 - H. Eugene Stanley, Boston University 1998 - Douglas D. Osheroff, Stanford University 1999 - Wayne H. Knox, Bell Laboratories 2000 - William D. Phillips, National Institute of Standards and Technology 2001 - Shirley Ann Jackson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 2002 - Jordan A. Goodman, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 2003 - Margaret Murnane, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 2004 - Lene Vestergaard Hau, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 2005 - Carlos Bustamante, University of California, Berkeley CA 2006 - Neil Ashby, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 2007 - Alex Filippenko, University of California, Berkeley CA 2008/9 - Vera Rubin, Carnegie Institution of Washington 2010 - not Awarded 2011 - Kathryn Moler, Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials and Physics, Stanford University, CA 2012 - Brian Greene, Columbia University, New York, NY 2014 - Sir Michael Berry, University of Bristol 2016 - Derek Muller, Veritasium YouTube Channel, Catalyst 2017 - Jay M. Pasachoff, Williams College, Williamstown, MA 2018 - Mark Beck, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington 2023 - Jocelyn Bell Burnell, University of Oxford, Oxford, England 2024 - Katie Mack, Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada 2025 - Nadya Mason, University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, Chicago, IL 2026 - Rhett Allain, Southern Louisiana University, Hammond, LA
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