ROBERT K. GOULD PRIZE IN PHYSICS
Established in 1994 by friends and colleagues in honor of Robert K. Gould, professor of physics, 1968–1994. Awarded to the graduating senior whose senior work in physics best exemplifies the high standards for research set by Professor Gould.
The 2022 Robert K. Gould Prize in Physics was awarded to Sam Yurak for his outstanding laboratory work building a temporal focusing microscope, under the supervision of Assistant Professor of Physics Michael E. Durst. This sophisticated project required him to apply a wide range of knowledge in physics, including optics, lasers, and electricity and magnetism. He excelled in all aspects of this independent project, including building the apparatus, aligning laser beams, and acquiring and processing the data. Starting from a blank table, Sam built a microscope that can work in the infrared, which is a new wavelength regime for fluorescence microscopes.