Gemant Award Winners

For skillfully conveying the excitement and drama of science and for clarifying important scientific ideas through his books, articles, and many television programs. Riordan’s work has enhanced the public’s appreciation of physics as a source of beneficial applications and as an integral part of our intellectual life.

For excellence in the interpretation of physics to the public through numerous newspaper and magazine articles, books, lectures, and television productions.

For outstanding and sustained contributions in presenting a broad range of topics in physics to millions of nonscientists around the world, through books, periodical articles, radio, and television, and for his effective national leadership in developing and promoting new curricula for science education.

For her leadership in bringing top-notch, in-depth science programming to a weekly audience of several million viewers.

For his internationally best-selling books A Brief History of Time, and Black Holes and the Baby Universes and Other Essays, his outstanding PBS series Stephen Hawking's Universe, his role in Star Trek, and his series of public talks that are examples of exceptional leadership in communicating science to the public.

For writing with clarity and accuracy for his physicist colleagues, and for writing The First Three Minutes and Dreams of a Final Theory with the same integrity that provided a broad audience with rare insights into the thinking of a theoretical physicist.

Not satisfied with a distinguished career in theoretical astrophysics, he went into science writing, history of science and the writing of fiction based on his thorough understanding and love of theoretical physics.

For his accomplishments as an outstanding experimenter, master builder and designer, and sculptor of stone, wood, and metal.

For his success both in interpreting physics to the public as well as enlightening the community of physicists and other scholars regarding the cultural aspects of our science.

For his books, articles and lectures for general audiences on the history of twentieth-century physics and especially for his authoritative and readable biography of Niels Bohr, which compellingly tells the story of quantum physics and its influence on our thinking.

For pioneering the application of physics to archeology and art history, and for the development of the use of thermoluminescence and remanent magnetism for dating.

For his pioneering use of solid-state physics in the study of ancient art and artifacts to reconstruct their cultural, historical and technological significance.

For the clarity of his writing for the lay reader on the major issues of modern physics.

For his own work at the interface between the humanities and physics as a leading historian of science, and for his major contributions in interpreting physics to the public through his public lectures and media presentations [and] for his key role in development of a new curriculum of physics in secondary schools

For his creative writing on science, art and society in which he blends wide experience, a deep knowledge of and love for physics, and imaginative insight, producing books of high artistic merit, read and enjoyed by a wide public.

For deep and broad contributions to our understanding of the aesthetic dimension of physics. In our day of specialists, he is the ultimate generalist, celebrating the joy of unbridled intellectual curiosity. Through his writings, his stimulation of others, his teaching of colleagues and students, his films and television production, he has epitomized the values embodied in the Gemant Award.