Two UW-Madison faculty elected APS fellows

UW–Madison professors Gilbert Nathanson and Linda Sparke have been elected to the Fellowship program at the American Physical Society (APS), a worldwide federation of more than 42,000 physicists.

Nathanson, a chemistry professor, and Sparke, an astronomy professor, are two of the 192 APS members this year to receive the honor, which recognizes those members who have made significant advances in knowledge through original research and publications or innovative contributions in the application of physics to science and technology.

Much of Nathanson’s work focuses on understanding what happens at the atomic level when a gas meets a liquid surface. He uses a technique called molecular beam scattering to investigate the ways in which gas molecules are captured by and react with liquids and aerosols that are important either industrially or environmentally. Nathanson has been a member of the UW–Madison faculty since 1988.

Sparke, who joined the faculty in 1989 and is currently chair of the astronomy department, studies the motions of gas and stars as they orbit within galaxies. Examining this motion, she says, enables her to infer the galaxies’ distribution of “dark matter,” an invisible substance that scientists think makes up most of the mass of the galaxies.