William J. Willis (YC 1954, PhD 1958) along with 4 other noted alumni were honored with the Wilbur L. Cross medal on Monday, October 5th. He will be giving the Physics Club Talk on Tuesday, October 6th.
A pioneer in the field of elementary particle physics, Willis developed some of the most basic tools of high-energy elementary particle research: calorimetry and transition radiation. His wide-ranging experiments have been central to this evolving field. He has also been an outstanding scientific administrator at national and international laboratories, including Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). He has served on many international scientific advisory panels and now chairs the Research and Development Board for the International Linear Collider. After earning both his B.A. and Ph.D. from Yale, Willis worked at Brookhaven for seven years, and joined the Yale faculty (1965–1973). From 1973 to 1991, he worked at CERN, and then was named the Higgins Professor of Physics at Columbia University. His honors include membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Physical Society, which awarded him the Panofsky Prize in 2003.
The Yale Graduate School Alumni Association established the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal in 1966. It honors graduates of the Yale Graduate School for outstanding achievement in a phase of activity in which Cross himself excelled. An alumnus of Yale College and the Graduate School (Ph.D. 1889, English), Cross was a scholar of distinction and a distinguished literary critic. He headed the Graduate School 1916–1930. Following his retirement from academia, he served as governor of Connecticut for four terms.