College Park, MD, 1 February 2008 - The American Institute of Physics (AIP) 2007 Tate Medal for Leadership in International Physics goes to Yu Lu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. The Tate Medal recognizes distinguished service to the profession of physics by a non-US national. It is to be awarded every two years. The award is named for John Torrence Tate, in honor of his service to the physics community and consists of a certificate, a medal, and a check for ten thousand dollars.
Dr. Lu will receive the Tate Medal "in recognition of four decades of landmark contributions in bringing together the world's condensed matter physics community, the support of young scientists, the creation of important international conferences, and international statesmanship in theoretical physics."
Yu Lu, was born in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu (China) in 1937 and obtained his Diploma in Physics from Kharkov State University, Soviet Union, in 1961, following which he joined the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing. In 1979 he moved to the Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing. He became a full professor in 1983. During the period 1979-81 he was a visiting scholar at Harvard University and the University of California, Santa Barbara. For 1983-84 Yu Lu became an Associate Member of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) of Trieste, Italy and in 1986 was appointed a research physicist at the ICTP. He served as Head of the Condensed Matter Section until 2002.
Yu's strong research program provided a platform for training young researchers from developing countries and led to the creation of ICTP programs for visitors, including a series of conferences and workshops. Returning to China, he founded and served as the Director of the Interdisciplinary CAS Center of Theoretical Studies (ICTS), to establish research in new disciplines that were not then active in China.
Yu Lu has authored nearly 200 research papers and three books. Yu Lu and his coauthors published two influential papers in the mid-70s that captured international attention, generating invitations to visit the west as well as the basis for hosting the earliest delegations of prominent US and European scientists to China He was a primary organizer of the Adriatico Research Conferences, of which some 30 were held at ICTP, including the Conference on High Temperature Superconductivity in 1987, where more than 15 leading scientists from the former Soviet Union took part.
Yu Lu has played an essential role in organizing scientific activities in developing countries. He was one of the main organizers of the BCSPIN (Bangladesh-China-Sri Lanka-Pakistan-India-Nepal) schools on the frontiers of physics. The first school of this series was held in Kathmandu, Nepal in 1989 and the most recent was in Beijing in 2007. The respect and international recognition gained by the ICTS has played an important international role for China.
Since 2004 Yu Lu has organized five very successful international Colleges at ICTS and has brought many outstanding international scientists in close contact with scientists from China and the Asia-Pacific region. In 1997 Yu Lu and his colleagues initiated the Asia-Pacific Workshop on strongly correlated electron systems to promote regional collaboration. He also contributed significantly to the establishment of a condensed matter program in the Asian-Pacific Center of Theoretical Physics, Korea.
Yu Lu is presently a Research Fellow of the Institute of Physics, CAS, a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, a Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. During 1984-1990 he was a Member of the IUPAP Commission on the Structure and Dynamics of Condensed Matter. He has served on the Editorial Boards of the International Journal of Modern Physics B, Modern Physics Letters B, and on advisory boards of several other international journals.