Myriam Sarachik awarded the 2020 APS Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research

Myriam Sarachik, distinguished professor in the Division of Science at The City College of New York, is the recipient of the 2020 American Physical Society Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research. The medal is the society’s largest prize, recognizing the achievements of researchers from across all fields of physics.

The honor is in recognition of Sarachik’s “fundamental contributions to the physics of electronic transport in solids and molecular magnetism,” and it will be received along with a $50,000 prize at a ceremony on January 30, 2020 in Washington, D.C.

Sarachik has investigated superconductors, disordered metallic alloys, metal-insulator transitions in doped semiconductors, hopping transport in solids, strongly interacting electrons in two dimensions and spin tunneling in nanomagnets. In addition to her research, she has served as a member and chair of the Solid State Sciences Committee of the National Research Council, the Human Rights Committee of the New York Academy of Sciences and the Board of the Committee of Concerned Scientists. 

She earned her B.A. degree from Barnard College, and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from Columbia University. Following research associate positions at IBM Watson Laboratories at Columbia University and at Bell Laboratories, she joined the faculty of City College of the City University of New York as an Assistant Professor of Physics in 1964 and was promoted through the ranks to Distinguished Professor in 1995.

She has also received the 1995 New York City Mayor's Award for Excellence in Science and Technology and a 2004 Sloan Public Service Award from the Fund for the City of New York. She was awarded the 2005 APS Oliver E. Buckley Prize in Condensed Matter Physics, and was named the 2005 L’Oreal/UNESCO for women in science Laureate for North America.

Sarachik is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and she is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the New York Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree by Amherst College in 2006.

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