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Awards and honors

Two MIT emeritus professors--Dr. Morris Cohen and Dr. Regis M. N. Pelloux--have received 1995 awards from ASM International, the informational society for the field of engineered materials.

Dr. Cohen, Institute Professor Emeritus, won the prestigious J. Herbert Hollomon Award sponsored by Acta Metallurgica, the international journal of the science of materials. Dr. Hollomon was its principal initiator.

Nominated by ASM International and The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society, Dr. Cohen was selected "in recognition of his leadership in guiding US national materials policy and the evolution of the multidiscipline of materials science and engineering, as well as his teaching and research contributions."

His research has played a seminal role in a number of areas.

Professor Cohen chaired the NAS Survey on Materials Science and Engineering from 1970-75. He served on the National Aeronautics and Space Advisory Council in 1980-83, on the steering committee of the NRC Study of Materials Science and Engineering for the 1990s, and co-chaired the NSF Study on Atomic Resolution Microscopy in 1992-93.

His numerous awards include the National Medal of Science in 1977 and the Kyoto Prize in 1987.

Dr. Pelloux, professor of materials engineering emeritus, received the Albert Sauver Achievement Award "for pioneering contributions in the areas of fatigue crack propagation, micromechanisms of deformation and fracture, and quantitative microscopic analysis of fracture processes in structural engineering alloys."

Dr. Pelloux, born and raised in France, received his baccalaureat from the Lycee in Grenoble, France, the mechanical engineering degree from the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in Paris, and both the MS and ScD from MIT.

He was a research specialist in the Scientific Research Laboratories of the Boeing Co. in Seattle from 1961 to 1968, with the exception of one year, 1966-67, when he was a visiting associate professor at MIT in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He joined the faculty in 1968.

His principal interests have been on the engineering side of physical metallurgy. Both at Boeing and MIT, his work in electron fractography led to a wide application of this technique to failure analysis and to the study of the micromechanisms of fracture.

He has received a number of awards, including the ASM's Lucas Metallographic Award and the Medaille Sainte-Claire Deville of the Societe de Metallurgie. He was made a Membre d'Honneur of the Societe Francaise de Metallurgie and de Materiaux in 1993 in recognition of his work on fatigue and failure analysis.

The Best New American Play Award, given by the Live Oak Theatre of Austin, TX, has gone to Playwright Alan Brody, MIT's newly appointed associate provost for the arts, for his play, The Housewives of Manheim.

A staged reading of the play, selected from submissions from across the country, was presented recently at the State Theatre in Austin as part of the Live Oak Theatre's 1995 Harvest Festival of New American Plays.

Dr. Brody, who receives a $1,000 prize, also will join with the theatre's artistic team in a workshop development phase, readying the play for full production.

Set in Brooklyn, NY, in 1944, The Housewives of Manheim presents a young middle-class mother who wants to change, grow and expand her vision of the world, but must deal with the pain of growth and betrayal. It has an all-female cast of characters.

Dr. Brody, professor of theater at MIT since 1988, has headed the Music and Theater Arts Section in the School of Humanities and Social Science since 1990.

The Association for Women in Mathematics has awarded its Alice T. Schafer Mathematics Prize to Ruth A. Britto-Pacumio of MIT, a senior from Vestal, NY, "in recognition of excellence in mathematics."

Ms. Britto-Pacumio completed the requirements for a mathematics major with no grade lower than an A and excels in graduate courses, according to faculty members.

She participated in the Research Experiences for Undergraduates program at the University of Minnesota-Duluth in 1994.

ERRATUM

Because of a typographical error, an item in Awards and Honors on November 15 misstated the annual savings to be expected from a water reclamation and reuse system in Building 13. It is $160,000, not $160 million.


A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on December 6, 1995.

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