Saint Michael's College Associate Professor of Physics, Dr. Alain Brizard, was informed September 28, that he has been selected for Fellowship in the American Physical Society (APS), at the recommendation of the Division of Plasma Physics. This honor, regarded as “the ultimate professional honor as a physicist,” is limited to no more than one half of one percent of APS membership.
Election to APS Fellowship is recognition by your peers, the director wrote, of your outstanding contributions to physics. Dr. Brizard was informed that the citation, which will appear on his Fellowship Certificate, will read as follows:
“For pioneering the modern formulation of nonlinear gyrokinetics, including the development of methodology for general geometry, the theory of dynamical reduction, and a variational formulation of the gyrokinetic-Maxwell system.”
Professor Brizard’s name and citation will be published in the March 2012 issue of APS News, and will appear on the Fellowship Page of the APS Home Page. His certificate will be presented at the annual meeting of the Division of Plasma Physics of the American Physical Society.
Dr. Brizard, who is adviser this year to the new SMC water-polo club, has published three textbooks: An Introduction to Lagrangian Mechanics (World Scientific Publishing Co., 2008); A.N. Kaufman, E.R. Tracy, A.J. Brizard, and A.S. Richardson, Modern Eikonal Methods: Theory and Applications in Plasma Physics (Cambridge University Press, expected publication date: 2011); and Alain J. Brizard, Lecture Notes on Gyrokinetic Theory (World Scientific Publishing Co., expected publication date: early 2012).
Dr. Brizard, who earned his doctorate in physics from Princeton University in 1990, has authored some 61 peer-reviewed scientific publications appearing in such journals as Journal of Physics, The Journal of Plasma Physics,and Physics of Plasmas.