Samuel Goudsmit wins 1974 Compton Medal

About the Winner

Samuel Goudsmit is widely known as the co-discoverer of electron spin, as the leader of the Alsos mission to Europe in the closing months of World War II, and as the founder and first editor of Physical Review Letters. These three achievements reflect three facets of a long career encompassing fundamental contributions to physics, service to the nation, and service to is fellow physicists worldwide.

In twenty-three years as Editor-in-Chief of the America Physical Society, he has had to face two inexorable exponential tides, one the volume of research needing publication and the other the cost of publishing it. In coping with these tides, he has displayed scientific judgment, sound business sense, uncompromising dedication to the welfare of his colleagues, toughness, good humor, and down-to-earth common sense.