Contact: Terry Costlow Two U.S. IEEE Members to Receive Nation's Top Science Medal WASHINGTON (04 November 2003) — Two U.S. IEEE members will be honored by President George W. Bush with the National Medal of Science in a White House ceremony on 6 November. The medal is the nation's highest scientific honor. Leo. L. Beranek, an IEEE Fellow and acoustic specialist whose company helped create the Internet, was awarded the medal for engineering. Richard L. Garwin, an IEEE Life Senior Member whose work helped pave the way for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems, won the physical sciences medal. Beranek began working in acoustics early in World War II, helping develop microphones that could be used in conjunction with oxygen masks used before cockpits were pressurized. After the war, he co-founded the acoustics lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working with architects who built the United Nations' building. Beranek began a business, "Bolt, Beranek and Newman," which developed mufflers for jet engines, among other jobs. He worked with authorities to establish rules forcing aircraft manufacturers to use mufflers, drastically reducing noise levels. "That did more good for people of the world than anything else I've ever done," Beranek said. Recognized for acoustics, Beranek's company helped create a technology that has had an impact on many people throughout the world. "BBN had the best software people, and we beat out everyone for an ARPA contract, so we were the founders of the Internet," Beranek said. (ARPA is the forerunner of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.) Garwin, an IBM Fellow Emeritus, began working with magnetic resonance shortly after he joined IBM in 1952. Though the technology didn't work for its original application — computer memory — magnetic resonance is now a mainstay of the medical field. Garwin also did extensive work in superconductors, gravity waves and particle physics, and with both liquid and solid helium. He also helped develop laser printers, touch screens and satellite reconnaissance techniques. IEEE-USA is an organizational unit of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., created in 1973 to advance the public good, while promoting the careers and public-policy interests of the more than 235,000 electrical, electronics, computer and software engineers who are U.S. members of the IEEE. The IEEE is the world's largest technical professional society. For more information, go to http://www.ieeeusa.org.
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November 2003 |