Associate Professor of Physics Michael Brown
Honored by American Physical Society

by Stacey Kutish
10/16/2007

Swarthmore College Associate professor of Physics, Michael Brown, has been awarded the American Physical Society's (APS) 2008 Prize for a Faculty Member for Research in an Undergraduate Institution.

Brown was cited by the society's selection committee "for his outstanding contributions to plasma physics made possible by his development of a world-class spheromak laboratory at the College, and for his energetic mentoring of undergraduate students."

Brown is the principal investigator in the Swarthmore Spheromak Experiment (SSX), which studies fundamental plasma physics phenomena such as magnetic reconnection using rings of plasma called spheromaks. A co-founder of the Center for Magnetic Self-Organization in Laboratory and Astrophysical Plasmas, his experiments at Swarthmore have received more than $2.5 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, NSF, Research Corp, Petroleum Research Fund, NASA, and others.