Faculty Spotlight
Dr. Myriam Sarachik, Distinguished Professor of Physics at the City College
Myriam Sarachik, Distinguished Professor of Physics at the City College, was named the 2005 L'ORÉAL-UNESCO for Women in Science North American Laureate "for important experiments on electrical conduction and the transition between metals and solids" and honored at a special ceremony in France on March 3rd. Later in the month, she received the 2005 Oliver E. Buckley Prize in Condensed Matter Physics for "fundamental contributions to experimental studies of quantum spin dynamics and spin coherence in condensed matter systems." These awards, which were accompanied with cash prizes, underscore an already illustrious career of one of this country's most prominent women Physicists.
After earning a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1960, Dr. Sarachik did postdoctoral work at IBM Watson and AT&T Bell Laboratories before joining the faculty at the City College as an assistant professor in 1964. She was promoted to associate professor in 1967, to the rank of professor in 1971, and Distinguished Professor in 1995. She served as the Executive Officer of the University wide doctoral program in Physics from 1975 to 1978. Dr. Sarachik received the 1995 New York City Mayor's Award for Excellence in Science and Technology and the 2004 Sloan Public Service Award from the Fund for the City of New York. In 2003 she served as president of the American Physical Society, the third woman president in the society's 105-year history. Dr. Sarachik is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the APS, a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Dr. Sarachik's career has focused on wide-ranging areas of condensed matter physics from superconductivity to metal-insulator transitions to the properties of molecular nano-magnets. From very early on, even before she became a full-time faculty, Dr. Sarachik made important contributions in condensed matter physics, beginning with her determination of "the superconducting energy gap from measurements of the superconducting penetration depth in the classic superconductors tin and lead." While at Bell Laboratories, she made her seminal contribution by establishing "the correspondence between a minimum in the electrical resistivity of an alloy as a function of temperature and the presence of dilute magnetic moments. This work played a key experimental role in support of the theoretical advance embodied in the Kondo effect."
Dr. Sarachik's growing interests in phase transformations coincided with the transformations of her own career emphasis at City College, from research to administration to back to research. In so doing, she was able to do what very few other academic research scientists have succeeded in accomplishing-be at the forefront of research, take a ten-year hiatus, make up for the gap in research and publications, and catch-up with the forefront again. In her second go-around, with metal-insulator transition as her new line of investigation, Dr. Sarachik was able to show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, a true phase transition may occur in two-dimensional systems. Her group has also demonstrated quantum mechanical spin dynamics in molecular magnets. In her laboratory, Dr. Sarachik and her team are currently pursuing the study of condensed matter properties at low temperatures, with particular focus on two areas: molecular nano-magnets and the novel behavior of two-dimensional electron systems.
So how does the 2005 Women in Science Laureate react to the comments made by Dr. Larry Summers that there are "innate attitudes" that explain the low number of scientific women? Dr. Sarachik thinks genetic and environmental influences aside, success in science, as in any other field, requires tenacity and hard work. She believes that Dr. Summers' comments have been both beneficial and harmful; beneficial, in the sense that the issue has stimulated a broad public debate, and harmful, in the sense that it echoed the same attitudes that made things so difficult for her when she entered the field, more than forty years ago.
1. Information about the Women in Science Award can be found at, www.loreal.com/_en/_ww/loreal-women-in-science/; information about the Oliver E. Buckley prize is available at: http://www.aps.org/praw/buckley/; for City College’s official press release, visit, www.ccny.cuny.edu/pr/news/2005/03/Jay050309.htm.
2. Detail information about Dr. Sarachik is available from her website at, www.sci.ccny.cuny.edu/~sarachik/
3. For more information about Dr. Sarachik’s contribution to condensed matter physics please visit
www.physics.ucla.edu/~cwp/dev/exp.1.html
4. To learn more about Dr. Sarachik’s early life and struggles see: Waaserman, Elga (2000). The Door in the Dream: Conversations with Eminent Women in Science, Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press.
5. See http://www.loreal.com/_en/_ww/loreal-women-in-science/awards/laureates2005/profile_sarachik.aspx for a more complete description of the context of Dr. Sarachik’s research.
