In recognition of his outstanding success in promoting international physics over a long and distinguished career, especially for his effective support of Soviet and Eastern European physicists after the breakup of the Soviet Union, his stimulation of the development of accelerator technology throughout Europe, and his leadership in initiating a collaborative facility for synchrotron radiation research in the Middle East.
Throughout his long and distinguished career, Professor Voss often brought an international flavor to his projects by reaching out to and involving many foreign scientists. After the breakup of the former Soviet Union, for instance, he found professional opportunities and financial support for numerous Eastern Bloc scientists, helping to preserve their careers. Since 1997 he has been a critical contributor to the Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME), a large research laboratory in Jordan that is now in construction as a collaboration of nine Middle Eastern countries.
Over his career, Professor Voss published more than 50 scientific and technical papers and served on more than a dozen review and advisory committees at accelerator laboratories around the world. He received an honorary degree from the University of Heidelberg in 1982, and in 1985, Germany honored him with its Federal Cross of Merit, First Class. In 1994 Voss received the Robert R. Wilson Prize from the American Physical Society, and in 2007, he was the first to receive the DESY Golden Pin.