News from Brown, 20 August 2018
Renowned Brown University physicist S. James Gates Jr. has been elected to lead the premier physics society in the U.S.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Brown University physics professor S. James Gates Jr. has been elected to the presidential line of the American Physical Society, a nonprofit that represents more than 55,000 physicists in higher education, national laboratories and industry in the U.S. and across the world.

Gates will serve as the society’s vice president in 2019, president-elect in 2020 and president in 2021. The APS president leads the society’s board of directors, which has the ultimate responsibility for the actions of the society. The society’s mission is to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics through its research journals, scientific meetings, and education, outreach, advocacy and international activities.

Gates says he’s honored to have been elected by his fellow physicists and that he sees this as a critical time to be taking on this new role.

“Now is a time when all good citizens need to come to the aid of our nation’s future,” he said. “This can be done best, in my opinion, by providing service to the mission of rededicating efforts to the bridging of chasms that have appeared in our nation. Some of these exist between portions of the public and the science community, and we must not let these deleterious processes go unchallenged.”

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