The latter effort is made possible by a gift from James A. Earl and the Helena Foundation and the National Science Foundation. Our undergraduate majors are among the best in the United States. As an example, Anna Lopatnikova won the Apker Award of the American Physical Society for research done under the supervision of Professor Nihat Berker. This is the second student of Berker's to win the Apker. In addition, MIT's team won first place in the 1999 Boston Area Undergraduate Physics Competition where MIT's Mihai Ibanescu was the top scoring individual for the second year in a row.
Most physics research is done through participation of our faculty in labs and centers.
Rather than an overview, we discuss here a few highlights to give a sense of the excitement of research in the Department. The ASM has exceeded the hopes and expectations even of its designers in terms of scientific return. Many of the objects RXTE was designed to study are X-ray transients. Roughly one third of all RXTE observations, including many of its most important, have been scheduled in response to ASM monitoring. The ASM also detects emission from previously unknown sources.