Sam Aronson is an American physicist, formerly President of the American Physical Society in 2015 and also formerly the Director of the

Brookhaven National Laboratory Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory located in Upton, Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base and Japanese internment c ...

from 2006 to 2012.

Biography

Aronson was born in Huntington, New York. He earned an A.B. in physics from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in 1964, and a Ph.D. in physics from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

in 1968. After graduation, Aronson worked at the Enrico Fermi Institute for Nuclear Studies as a research associate until 1972. He later joined the faculty of the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...

and was on the faculty until 1977 before joining the Accelerator Department of the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) as associate physicist. He moved to the Lab's Physics Department in 1982, became associate chair of the department in 1987, then deputy chair in 1988. In 1991, Aronson became director of the PHENIX detector project, overseeing the construction of the

Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC ) is the first and one of only two operating heavy-ion colliders, and the only spin-polarized proton collider ever built. Located at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Upton, New York, and used by a ...

. He became director of the Laboratory’s Physics Department in 2001. He became associate laboratory director for nuclear and particle physics in 2005 and was named director in 2006. In 2013, Aronson became director of the RIKEN BNL Research Center. He served as Vice President of the American Physical Society in 2013 and became President in 2015. Aronson was named Senior Scientist Emeritus of the BNL in 2017. He is the Secretary of the National Offshore Wind R&D Consortium. Aronson is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American physicists {{US-physicist-stub Columbia College (New York) alumni Princeton University alumni Brookhaven National Laboratory staff Fellows of the American Physical Society Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 20th-century American physicists People from Huntington, New York University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty Presidents of the American Physical Society