Yuri F. Orlov, Cornell University physicist, has won the 1995 Nicholson Medal for Humanitarian Service from the American Physical Society (APS).

The medal, established in 1994, recognizes the humanitarian aspects of physics and physicists and consists of a medal and certificate. Orlov will receive the award at the APS meeting Saturday, May 4, in Indianapolis. He also will present a paper at the meeting, scheduled for 3:45 p.m. CDT Friday, May 3, during a session on Physics and Society.

Orlov earned the award, according to the citation, "For uniting his love of physics with an intense dedication to international human rights; for his public espousal of openness and freedom in the face of severe personal consequences; for co-founding the Moscow chapter of Amnesty International and founding the first Helsinki Watch group; for helping establish Helsinki groups elsewhere in the Soviet Union; for his outspoken support of Andrei Sakharov; and for his continuing work for democratic principles in former-USSR countries, in China and in Bosnia. Yuri Orlov's commitment and accomplishments have inspired a generation of fighters for freedom worldwide."

Orlov, 71, is a senior scientist in Cornell's Laboratory of Nuclear Studies in the Physics Department. A former Soviet dissident who was interned in labor camps for almost 10 years, he founded the Helsinki Watch Group in 1976 to monitor Soviet adherence to the 1975 Helsinki human rights accords. He had been at the Moscow Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics but was fired in 1956, marking the start of his political and human rights activities.

Orlov did physics research until 1972 at the Yerevan Physics Institute in Armenia, where he designed a particle accelerator, and then the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism and Dissemination of Radio Waves in Moscow until 1973. He wrote scientific filmstrips and did freelance work until his arrest in 1977.

Freed from exile in Siberia in 1986, he was stripped of his Soviet citizenship and deported to the United States as part of the deal in which U.S. journalist Nicolas Daniloff was exchanged for a Soviet spy. Orlov came to Cornell in December 1986.

A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Orlov studies particle accelerator design, beam interaction analysis and quantum mechanics. He has authored more than 70 research papers, numerous articles on human rights, and an autobiography, Dangerous Thoughts (1991).

The APS is an organization of more than 41,000 physicists worldwide. Since its formation in 1899, it has been dedicated to the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of physics. The APS publishes some of the world's leading physics research journals: the Physical Review series, Physical Review Letters, and Reviews of Modern Physics. It also organizes scientific meetings where new results are reported and discussed.