2016 Tom W. Bonner Prize in Nuclear Physics Recipient  

I-yang Lee
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Citation:

"For seminal contributions to the field of nuclear structure through the development of advanced gamma-ray detectors as realized in the Gammasphere device, and for pioneering work on gamma-ray energy tracking detectors demonstrated by the Gamma-ray Energy Tracking Array (GRETINA)."

Background:

I-Yang Lee received his bachelor`s degree in physics from National Taiwan University in 1968. He did graduate work under Juerg Saladin at University of Pittsburgh and obtained his Ph.D. in 1974. He then worked as a post-doc at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory studying nuclear high-spin properties. He moved to Oak Ridge National laboratory in 1977, and worked on various programs on nuclear structure, relativistic heavy ion collisions, detector development, and accelerator research. In 1992 he joined the staff of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and participated in the construction of Gammasphere which is about 100 times more powerful than its predecessors. Since its completion in 1995, it has been used by hundreds of forefront experiments at the 88-Inch Cyclotron at LBNL and ATLAS at Argonne National Laboratory. Later, he developed the novel concept of gamma-ray energy tracking detector which uses highly segment Ge detector to provide position resolution for each gamma ray interaction. A partial array, Gamma-ray Energy Tracking Array (GRETINA), was completed in 2011. It has been operated at 88-Inch Cyclotron, NSCL at Michigan State University, and ATLAS at ANL, and demonstrated its power of providing good energy resolution and high peak-to back ground ratio even at high recoil velocities. The full array is being planned to be completed for "day one" experiments at FRIB in 2022. Lee is a Fellow of the APS. He has served on the DNP Executive Committee, and as a Divisional Associate Editor of Physical Review Letters. He was a member of the Program Advisory Committees of HHRIF at ORNL, and ATLAS at ANL. He has served on the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee, and the NSAC Long-Range Planning Working Group.

Selection Committee:

Calvin R. Howell (Chair), Steven R. Elliott, Howard Wieman, Rocco Schiavilla, Kate Jones