The International Affairs Program would like to recognize Professor Emeritus Jerry Peterson as the new Chair-Elect for the Forum on International Physics (FIP) as part of the American Physical Society. As a result of the appointment, he will now chair the FIP Program Committee which arranges their talks for 2018. Peterson now holds professor emeritus status at the University of Colorado Boulder, previously taught International Affairs courses, and is a long-time friend of the program.
In January 2017, the American Physical Society met in Washington D.C., and Peterson organized and chaired a session called "Physics Improves Diplomacy". The speakers were: John Boright, heads of international side of the Academy of Sciences; Vaughn Turekian, Science Advisor to the US Sectretary of State; and Ambassador Sergei Kislyak of the Russian Federation and world-known physicist. This session gained such interest and attendance, that the room had to be expanded to accommodate more people, and it received national press in the United States and Russia.
Congratulations to you Prof. Peterson, we look forward to hearing about your continued work as the new Chair-elect for FIP.
Jerry Peterson is a professor emeritus of Physics at the University of Colorado and a former faculty committee member of the International Affairs Program. He is also a Jefferson Science Fellow for the U.S. Department of State. After receiving his undergraduate (1961) and graduate (1966) degrees in Physics at the University of Washington, he was an instructor at Princeton University and on the research faculty at Yale University. Jerry's research interests have covered many arenas of nuclear physics, including nuclear astrophysics, nuclear reactions, nuclear fission, and applications of nuclear reactions to computer memory elements.