Science and Technology at the Ames Laboratory
Spring 1996
Ames Laboratory has received national recognition for its materials research. Laboratory scientists won three of only nine Materials Sciences Awards given nationally by the DOE in 1995.
A team of 11 researchers (Paul Canfield, Alan Goldman, David Johnston, Constantine Stassis, Bruce Harmon, Ferdinando Borsa, David Lynch, Lance Miller, Clifford Olson, David Torgeson and Jerel Zarestky) won an award for "outstanding scientific accomplishment" in solid state physics. The team has been investigating the electronic and magnetic properties of single-crystal rare-earth nickel-borocarbide superconductors, a small group of compounds that are both superconducting and strongly magnetic at low temperatures.
A team of four researchers (R. William McCallum, Alan Goldman, Matthew Kramer and Thomas Lograsso) won an award for "sustained outstanding research" in solid state physics for studies of the structure and properties of quasicrystals, a new class of solids discovered in 1984.
Senior Chemist John Corbett won an award for "sustained outstanding research" in materials chemistry. Corbett has devoted the past 15 years to the exploratory synthesis and study of broad classes of compunds made from two or more metals, of families of such compounds stabilized by common impurity atoms, and of naked clusters of metals in solids. He has also investigated bonding rules for certain types of mixed metal compounds. Among his accomplishments is the creation of the first noncarbon example of buckyballs.
"It's a great testimony to the quality of the scientific
work done at Ames Laboratory that we won three of the nine awards
in competition with 13 much larger laboratories," says Bruce
Thompson, associate director for science and technology at the
Lab. "This outstanding accomplishment springs from a
tradition of academic excellence and interdisciplinary teamwork
that is an essential element of work done at the national
laboratories."
Thomas Lograsso, Ames Laboratory metallurgist, won the 1996 Award for Excellence in Technolgy Transfer from the Federal Laboratory Consortium, which represents over 700 federal laboratories and research facilities and more than 100,000 scientists. The award recognizes Lograsso's work as manager of the Lab's Materials Referral System and Hotline (MRSH) and director of the Iowa Companies Assistance Program (ICAP). Both programs provide outreach services to industry and the research community worldwide. "It's nice that these programs have been recognized for their value to industry," says Lograsso.
Armed with only old parts, photographs, notes and recollections, a group of Ames Laboratory engineers has set out to help replicate a revolutionary piece of American history, the first electronic computer.
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) was developed by former Iowa State University (ISU) professor of mathematics and physics John Vincent Atanasoff and engineering graduate student Clifford Berry in the late 1930s to speed up the calculation process. But recognition of their achievement didn't officially come until 1973, when a federal court ruled in a patent-infringement lawsuit that ideas for the modern computer originated with Atanasoff.
"Atanasoff did the same thing for computing that the Wright brothers did for aviation," says John Gustafson, Ames Laboratory computational scientist and ISU adjunct associate professor of computer science, who credits Atanasoff with the invention of digital storage, or computer memory as we know it.
Gustafson is a member of the Ames Lab/ISU team hoping to build three working replicas of the ABC: one for ISU, one for Atanasoff's family and one for the Smithsonian Institution. Their quest for information has led them in many directions, including a meeting with Atanasoff in 1995 to look through archival information. (Atanasoff died later that year.)
"Our greatest challenge has been identifying the computer's many intricate parts," says Delwyn Bluhm, director of the engineering team and manager of Ames Laboratoy R&D Engineering. "We are continually amazed at the large number of ingenious and creative methods Dr. Atanasoff employed in building his computer."
The group plans to complete the first of the replicas of the ABC by August 1996.
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