Yale Physics Professor, Francesco Iachello was awarded the 2002 Lise Meitner Prize for Nuclear Science of the European Physical Society. The prize, given biannually, was awarded to Iachello for his, “…innovative applications of group theoretical methods to the understanding of atomic nuclei.”
Iachello, a member of the Yale University faculty since 1978, had published a series of papers (with Akito Arima) between 1974 and 1979, which developed the interactive boson model of nuclei. The model has shaped the current understanding of a large class of nuclei. In his later efforts, he discovered a supersymmetric approach generalizing the earlier U(6) work, and introduced a model of molecules, the vibron model, based on the dynamical group U(4). The model has formed the basis for describing many phenomena in small and large molecules.
Among his past credits, Iachello has received both the 1990 Eugene Wigner Medal of the Group Theory and Fundamental Physics Foundation, and the 1993 Tom W. Bonner Prize of the American Physical Society, as well as honorary doctorates from Italy, China, and Spain. The Lise Meitner Prize address was delivered at the 2002 Meeting of the European Physical Society in Budapest, Hungary.