8 National Medals of Science awardees to be honored at gala, then the W...(love is the author of Nuclear Spectrosc...)

In her engaging memoir, "A Matter of Choices: Memoirs of a Female Physicist," Ajzenberg-Selove wrote candidly about her difficult journey to international recognition in physics. She came to America at the age of 15 after narrowly escaping the Nazi takeover of France. She had planned to become an engineer like her father, but switched to physics after she was told the only engineering jobs open to women were in drafting. Marie Curie's example proved to her that women could do physics. Though she deemed her first attempt at graduate work at Columbia University a disaster, she was struck with the intellectual beauty of the field. When she became a nuclear physicist, the number of women in the field could be counted on one hand. Among her victories, she overcame battles to become a tenured professor and to overcome breast cancer--concurrently.

Ajzenberg-Selove earned a Ph.D. in physics at the University of Wisconsin and did post-doctoral work at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech).

Mostafa El-Sayed - Georgia Institute of Technology

For his seminal contributions to our understanding of the electronic and optical properties of nano-materials and to their applications in nano-catalysis and nano-medicine; his humanitarian efforts in promoting the exchange of ideas; and his role in developing the scientific leadership of tomorrow.

Mostafa El-Sayed, an Egyptian-American chemical physicist and leading nanoscience researcher, is known for the spectroscopy rule named after him, the "El-Sayed Rule." He is currently the Julius Brown Chair and Regents Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he heads the Laser Dynamics Lab. His lab is known for the development of the gold nanorod technology. A major focus of his lab curre
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