John Silcox, the David E. Burr Professor of Engineering and director of the Materials Science Center at Cornell University, has won the 1996 Distinguished Scientist Award in the Physical Sciences from the Microscopy Society of America.

Silcox, professor of applied and engineering physics, won the award for “internationally recognized research accomplishments and distinguished contributions to microscopy.” Given annually since 1975, it is the highest honor bestowed by the world’s leading professional association of electron and optical microscopists. He received the award Aug. 12 in Minneapolis.

“I have enjoyed working with many fine students, and I am delighted with the recognition this brings to that work,” Silcox said.

A Fellow of the American Physical Society, Silcox came to Cornell in 1961 after holding a research fellowship at Cambridge University for electron microscopy studies of magnetic materials. He spent sabbatical leaves in France and Great Britain in 1967-68 as a Guggenheim Fellow, at Bell Laboratories in 1974-75 and at Arizona State University in 1983. Silcox earned an undergraduate degree from Bristol University in 1957 and a doctorate from Cambridge University in 1961, both in physics.

At Cornell since 1961, he has twice served as director of the School of Applied and Engineering Physics. In 1985 he earned the Tau Beta Pi Excellence in Engineering Teaching Award, and he has been director of the Materials Science Center since 1989.

A past president and member of the Electron Microscopy Society of America, Silcox has served on the Solid State Sciences Committee of the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council. He has been a member and past chair of the National Science Foundation’s Materials Advisory Committee and serves on the advisory committee for the Electron Microscopy Center for Materials Science at Argonne National Laboratory.

His research interests include electron microscopy, microspectroscopy and microdiffraction of materials by field-emission gun scanning transmission electron microscopy. The aim of his research is to establish quantitative procedures at the atomic or sub-atomic length scale that can be applied to materials science problems.

The Materials Science Center at Cornell fosters innovative, collaborative, interdisciplinary research in broad areas of materials research. It provides facilities and services and offers the opportunity for the exchange of ideas, information and expertise among researchers working in many disciplines, in both university and corporate settings, around the nation and throughout the world. It is funded by the National Science Foundation, with additional support from Cornell and from industrial sources.

Its core research programs involve about 40 Cornell faculty members from eight academic departments. It also supports 25 graduate-student research projects in six areas, and a program of research experience for undergraduates supports some 35 students from colleges around the country.