Vol. 38, No. 18

1-4-2007
By: Pam Frost Gorder

Physicist wins international award for materials science

For nearly 35 years, Arthur Epstein’s research has blurred the lines between physics and chemistry, and his discoveries have forever changed the role plastics play in our lives. Now the professor has won the prestigious James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials from the American Physical Society.

Epstein, Distinguished University Professor of Physics and Chemistry, shares the award with longtime collaborator Joel Miller, a chemist at the University of Utah. The two have invented a way to make polymers act like magnets — an innovation that secured them the prize.

Their citation reads: “For discovery and characterization of organic-based magnets, and for observation and study of predictable and previously unknown magnetic phenomena in these fascinating materials leading to fundamentally new science and the demonstrated potential for creative new technologies.”

APS awards the McGroddy Prize to recognize and encourage outstanding achievement in the science and application of new materials, including the discovery of new classes of materials, the observation of novel phenomena in known materials leading to both fundamentally new applications and scientific insights, and theoretical and experimental work contributing significantly to the understanding of such phenomena. The prize consists of $5,000, which Epstein and Miller will receive at the March 2007 APS meeting in Denver.

Robert McGrath, senior vice president for research, said the award is “a very well-deserved recognition of Epstein’s fantastic and sustained contributions to polymer science over the decades.”

Richard Freeman, dean of the College of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, added, “It is great to see the APS honor one of our outstanding professors. Art is a remarkable faculty member and a tremendous asset to Ohio State and the Department of Physics.”

Epstein and Miller first met in 1972, just after both joined the staff of Xerox. Epstein gave an internal seminar concerning a new kind of organic material that had electrical properties, and Miller approached him afterward with ideas for new ways to make such materials. Even after both returned to academia at separate institutions, they continued to work together — Miller’s lab finding new ways to make organic materials and Epstein’s lab deciphering the materials’ physical properties. The collaboration has been so enduring and fruitful that next January they will tour universities in Japan to talk about how they’ve been able to keep things going for so long.

They didn’t have such an easy time getting their ideas across to colleagues in the beginning; their work was unique, and people didn’t know what to make of it. The first paper they submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters was flatly rejected. One reviewer, Epstein remembers, said something akin to “Epstein does not understand physics,” and the other, “This work may be of interest to chemists, but not to physicists.”

He admits that it’s not always easy to see the potential value of new lines of research: “You don’t know where a technology is going to take you, from the discovery of a property in a material to finding out how best to use it.”

Some 200 papers later, Epstein and Miller are still publishing, frequently in PRL and other leading journals. One paper just accepted to the journal details a polymer that changes its conductive and magnetic properties in response to light. Another, published in Advanced Materials, concerns the potential for these molecule- and polymer-based magnets in the burgeoning field of spintronics.

onCampus Home