Donald H. Bilderback, associate adjunct professor of applied and engineering physics at Cornell University and associate director of the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS), has received the 1998 Compton Award from the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory.

The award was established by the APS Users Organization to recognize an important technical or scientific advance beneficial to the APS, which is the latest and largest synchrotron radiation source in the United States.

Bilderback, who received a plaque at Argonne on Oct. 13, shared the $4,600 award with Andreas K. Freund from the European Synchrotoron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France, and Gordon S. Knapp and Dennis M. Mills from Argonne. Mills is a former researcher at CHESS. The researchers were cited "for their innovation and leadership in developing cryogenically cooled X-ray optics suitable for handling the high power density of undulator X-ray beams, thus allowing users to perform scientific research at the third-generation synchrotron facilities."

Bilderback's research showed that silicon, when cooled to 125 degrees Kelvin, exhibits no thermal expansion and heat flows through it more readily that at room temperature. These characteristics allow silicon to handle higher heat densities than those on the surface of the sun or in nuclear fusion reactor vessels.

The Cornell researcher received his doctorate from Purdue University in 1975. He came to Cornell in 1975 as manager of the X-Ray Facility at the Materials Science Center. In 1978 he was named staff scientist at CHESS, and in 1990 became the facility's associate director. He is also president of an Ithaca company, Multiwire Laboratories Ltd.

The Compton prize, established in 1995, is named for Nobel laureate Arthur Compton, a University of Chicago physicist who discovered the phenomenon known as the Compton effect, the scattering of electrons by X-rays.