UO physicist Dave Soper to share a top 2009 APS prize

UO physics professor Dave Soper is a 2009 winner of the J.J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Physics. He will share the prize with John Collins (Penn State) and Keith Ellis (Fermilab) when presented formally in May during the American Physical Society's annual meeting in Denver. Soper was cited for his "work in perturbative quantum chromodynamics, including applications to problems pivotal to the interpretation of high-energy particle collisions." Quantum chromodynamics is a theory of strong nuclear interactions among quarks -- fundamental constituents of matter.

The prize honors J.J. Sakarai, a Japanese-American particle physicist who authored leading textbooks on quantum mechanics and the principles of elementary particles during a career at the University of Chicago and UCLA. This year's winners bring the total numbers of honorees to 39, including six who later won the Nobel Prize.