Academician Sow-Hsin Chen will receive the 2015 Guinier Prize for his lifetime achievement and outstanding contribution to the field of small-angle scattering, the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) announced August 20, 2015. Academician Chen will receive the prize from Professor Jill Trewhella, Chair of the International Union of Crystallography Small-angle Scattering Commission, and will present a plenary lecture at the Small-angle Scattering 2015 meeting on September 17.

Small-angle scattering is a powerful technique used in the field of non-crystalline materials such as colloids and macromolecules for investigating the nanostructures and inter-particle correlation in liquids and solids, including their size, shape and internal structure. Small-angle scattering studies were first conducted by French physicist Andre Guinier starting in 1938. The Guinier Prize, awarded by the International Union of Crystallography, recognizes lifetime achievement, a major breakthrough or an outstanding contribution to the field of small-angle scattering.

Over his 50-year career, Professor Sow-Hsin Chen has made numerous original and novel contributions by employing small-angle scattering in fundamental studies of soft condensed matter physics. He is one of the premier scientists and experts in the international scattering community. Hallmarks of his distinguished career include the development of new methods for data analysis, together with pioneering experiments on the structure and mutual interactions of self-assembled systems such as micelles, microemulsions and protein-surfactant complexes in solution. 

Academician Sow-Hsin Chen received his Ph.D. in Physics from McMaster University, where he worked under Nobel Laureate Professor B. N. Brockhouse. Currently, he is a Professor Emeritus of the Department of Nuclear Science & Engineering of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA. Since 1968, Academician Chen has trained a significant portion of the next generation of researchers in the field, including 45 Ph.D. students. In addition, he has written a comprehensive text book on scattering methods in complex fluids (Scattering Methods in Complex Fluids, Cambridge University Press, May 2015), in addition to his over 450 scholarly publications.

Professor Chen was elected an Academician of Academia Sinica in 2006. He is also the Fellow of American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Neutron Scattering Society of America (NSSA). Among his many awards, he was awarded the Clifford G. Shull Prize (NSSA) in 2008.

More information, please visit:

https://www.helmholtz-berlin.de/events/sas/guinier/index_de.html

http://www.iucr.org/