Awards
The ‘JSAP Outstanding Achievement Award’ recognizes outstand-talk during the Spring Meeting of the Japan Society of Applied Phys-

ing individual achievements in the field of applied physics. The JSAP Executive Board selects the recipient based on the recommendations ofics, March 2003. Dr. Iijima will have a commemorative talk during theAutumn Meeting of the Japan Society of Applied Physics, September

an awards committee appointed by the president of JSAP.

2003.

One of the award recipients, Dr. Tanaka had a commemorative

3rd JSAP Outstanding Achievement Awards(Research Accomplishments)

Recipient : Sumio Iijima, Ph.D.
Research Fellow, NEC Corporation
Professor, Meijo University
Citation : For the discovery and elucidation of carbon nanotubes

Recipient : Dr. Shoji Tanaka
Vice President, International Superconductivity Technology Center
Director, Superconductivity ResearchLaboratory
Citation : For pioneering research of oxide superconductors

Dr. Iijima was educated at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo. After completing his Ph.D. in physics at Tohoku University in Sendai, he moved to Arizona State University in Phoenix, Arizona. There, in postdoctoral research and later as a research scientistfrom 1970 to 1982, he worked on high-resolution electron microscopy. He is a professor at Meijo University in Nagoya, Japan, and a Research Fellow at NEC Laboratories.
Dr. Iijima revealed the first electron micrograph showing atoms ina crystal. Dr. Iijima also worked as a visiting scholar at Cambridge University in 1979, where he carried out electron microscopy of graphite.
He moved back to Japan in 1982 to join the ERATO ultra fine particles
project, where he succeeded in a dynamic observation on metal clusters. Dr. Iijima has been a research fellow at NEC since 1987 and discovered carbon nanotubes in 1991.
He is a recipient of the 1996 Asahi Award, the 2001 Agilent Technologies Europhysics Prize, B. E. Warren Diffraction Physics Award,Seto Award, Nishina Memorial Award, Asahi Award, Tsukuba Prize,
and the McGroddy Materials Prize for 2002 from the American Physical Society.
Inspired by the discovery of fullerenes (for which the 1996 Nobel chemistry was awarded), Dr. Iijima discovered tiny tubules with adiametre as small as 0.8 nanometres, now known as carbon nanotubes. By further discovering a technique to insert metal into the hollow of carbon nanotubes, Dr. Iijima created what could be the tiniest
wire ever made and has attracted considerable attention from the scientific community.

Dr. Tanaka became a member of the physics faculty of Tokyo University after a distinguished career at the doctoral level in the late
1950s. In 1959, He moved to Purdue University in West Lafayette,
Indiana to collaborate with Professor H. Y. Fan, a member of physics
department. He became Professor of Physics at the University of Tokyo in 1968, a position he held with great distinction until his retirement in 1988. In 1999, he received the Honorary Degree of Doctorof Science from Purdue University. As one of the leading members ofthe Japanese physics community, as the Vice President of the International Superconductivity Technology Center and as the Director of theSuperconductivity Technology Center, Dr. Tanaka has played an influential role in the high prestige Japanese science and technology internationally. Dr. Tanaka was honored by the Japanese government with
the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 1990.
In 1986, when Bednorz and Muller made the epoch-making
discovery that certain oxides can become superconductors at temperatures significantly higher than those at which the conventional
superconductors did, it was Dr. Tanaka’s group which validated it byconfirming it. The position Japan commands in the field of high Tc superconductors, an area of extraordinary importance in basic scienceand its applications, is in no small measure due to Dr. Tanaka’s scientific vision and preeminence as a scientist.

Recommendations are invited for 4th JSAP Outstanding Achievement Award. Details
about this award and criteria for selection can be found at:
http://www.jsapor.jp/activities/award/outstanding/provision.html (in Japanese).

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JSAP International No.8 (July 2003)