D. Allan Bromley, dean of engineering and Sterling Professor of the Sciences, has been awarded the prestigious Philip Hauge Abelson Prize by the American Association for the Advancement of Science AAAS. The award is given annually for outstanding scientific achievement and notable service to the scientific community.
Professor Bromley, former national science and technology adviser to President George Bush, is an internationally noted nuclear physicist with extensive experience in international science and technology policy. The Abelson prize recognizes Dean Bromley's "extraordinary record of service both to science and to the nation as a whole," according to Richard S. Nicholson, AAAS executive officer. The prize will be presented Feb. 15 during the AAAS annual meeting in Seattle.
As dean of engineering since 1994, he oversees all teaching and research within the chemical, electrical and mechanical engineering departments as well as the department of applied physics. Founder and director of Yale's A.W. Wright Nuclear Structure Laboratory at Yale 1963-89, Dean Bromley has carried out pioneering studies on both the structure and dynamics of nuclei and is considered the father of modern heavy ion science, one of the major areas of nuclear science. He has published more than 450 papers on science and technology, edited or authored 19 books and received numerous honors and awards, including the National Medal of Science, the highest U.S. scientific award.
As former president of the AAAS, the world's largest scientific society, and of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, the world coordinating body for that science, he has been one of the leading spokesmen for U.S. science and for international scientific cooperation.
The first person to hold the Cabinet-level rank of the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Professor Bromley increased both the staff and budget of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy by factors of more than five between 1989 and 1993. He revitalized and chaired the Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering and Technology, and achieved an unprecedented level of cooperation between agencies that support U.S. science and technology.