2002 National Medal of Science Recipients
Leo L. Beranek, retired engineer, for designing communications and noise-reduction systems for World War II aircraft. He has also written about the acoustics of concert halls.
John I. Brauman, professor of organic and physical chemistry at Stanford University, for determining the role that solvent plays in chemical stability and reactivity, and for studying the effects of energy transfer on chemical dynamics.
James E. Darnell, professor emeritus of biology at Rockefeller University, whose research on how cells retrieve information from DNA provided the first evidence for RNA processing and for signaling genes from the cell surface.
Richard L. Garwin, physicist and senior fellow for science and technology at the Council on Foreign Relations, who invented magnetic-resonance techniques that are used in medical imaging. His research also led to the development of superconducting electronic circuitry and many American military innovations.
James G. Glimm, professor of applied mathematics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, whose work in quantum field theory and statistical mechanics has influenced mathematical physics and probability and who has made contributions to shock-wave theory.
W. Jason Morgan, professor of geosciences at Princeton University, who explained plate tectonics and mantle plumes with theories that are the foundations of modern seismology, volcanology, and mantle geochemistry.
Evelyn M. Witkin, professor emerita of genetics at Rutgers University, who helped establish the field of DNA mutagenesis and DNA repair.
Edward Witten, professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, N.J., who is one of the principal authors of string theory, which attempts to describe all the known forces of nature in a unified way.
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