Neutron scattering society honors Mook with Shull Prize

Herbert A. Mook Jr., a UT-Battelle Senior Corporate Fellow at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been awarded the 2010 Clifford E. Shull Prize by the Neutron Scattering Society of America (NSSA).

The NSSA recognized Mook with its top award for his "outstanding contributions to the study of magnetism, superconductivity, and quantum phenomena in matter with neutrons."

Since 1965, Mook has spent his distinguished career at ORNL, where he has expanded his neutron scattering research to investigate the interaction of magnetism and superconductivity. Among Mook's diverse range of experiments utilizing neutrons, he and collaborators have studied the nature of the magnetic structure and fluctuations in high-temperature superconductors using ORNL's High Flux Isotope Reactor.

Mook completed his doctorate at Harvard University under the mentorship of the late Clifford Shull. The NSSA established the Shull prize in 2002 in honor of the 1994 co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics and to recognize high-impact neutron science research, as well as leadership in promoting the North America neutron scattering community.

"Shull was wonderful to work for. He had great insight and could get more physics out of a piece of data than anyone I know," Mook said of the Nobel laureate.

Mook served as the first scientific director of the Spallation Neutron Source from 1995-2000 and the director of the Center for Neutron Science from 2000-2004. He has twice received the DOE Award for Outstanding Scientific Accomplishments in Solid State Physics, in 1982 and 1998.

In addition to authoring some 225 papers with a total of 9000 citations, Mook holds several patents for neutron instrumentation he has developed, two of which received R&D 100 Awards.

Mook will be awarded the prize and $5000 honorarium at the 2010 American Conference on Neutron Scattering in June.

Provided by DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory