Apr 12 2010
At the German Physical Society's (Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft - DPG) annual Spring meeting the organization's Surface Science division (Fachverband Oberflächenphysik) selected Dr. Leo Gross, IBM Research - Zurich, for the Gerhard Ertl Young Investigator Award, a new scientific prize created and supported by Surface Science, a journal of Reed Elsevier. Gross was selected as the prize recipient for his work on charge measurement of atoms and atomic resolution of molecules with noncontact atomic force microscopy (AFM).
“My hearty congratulations to Leo Gross. His work is really outstanding, and I am very pleased that he is being honored by the first Gerhard Ertl Award. I wish him every success in the future,” said Gerhard Ertl, Professor emeritus, Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society and 2007 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.
The Gerhard Ertl Young Investigator Award is given by the Surface Science division of the DPG to recognize a young researcher—less than 6 years since PhD completion—for his or her outstanding research in surface science. This is the first year of the prize, which will be awarded annually at the DPG Spring Conference.
“This was a superb start for the Gerhard Ertl Young Investigator Award. We received many excellent applications from the the international surface science community and found it very difficult to narrow down the field to just five finalists,” comments Richard Berndt, head of the Surface Science division of the DPG.
Dr. Gross published twice last year in Science on his work on noncontact-AFM including “The Chemical Structure of a Molecule Resolved by Atomic Force Microscopy” by L. Gross, F. Mohn, N. Moll, P. Liljeroth, and G. Meyer, Volume 325, pp. 1110 – 1114 (28 August 2009) and “Measuring the Charge State of an Atom with Noncontact Atomic Force Microscopy” by L. Gross, F. Mohn, P. Liljeroth, J. Repp, F. J. Giessibl, and G. Meyer, Volume 324, pp. 1428 – 1431 (12 June 2009).