The Klopsteg Memorial Award is an annual prize given to a notable physicist in memory of Paul E. Klopsteg. Established in 1990, it is awarded by the American Association of Physics Teachers.
The Klopsteg Memorial Award recipient is asked to make a major presentation at an AAPT Summer Meeting on a topic of current significance suitable for non-specialists.
Award winners
Year Awardee Institution Topic2026Stefanie Walch-GassnerUniversity of Cologne and President of the German Astronomical Society2025Sean M. CarrollJohns Hopkins UniversityThe Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics2024Don LincolnFermi National Accelerator Laboratory2023Jeffrey BennettUniversity of Colorado Boulder 2021Helen CzerskiUniversity College LondonAn Ocean of Physics2020James KakaliosUniversity of MinnesotaPhysics of Superheroes2019Jodi CooleySouthern Methodist University 2018Clifford V. JohnsonUniversity of Southern CaliforniaBlack Holes and Time Travel in Your Everyday Life2017 John C. Brown University of Glasgow Black Holes and White Rabbits 2016 Margaret Wertheim Institute For Figuring Of Corals and the Cosmos: A Story of Hyperbolic Space 2015 David Weintraub Vanderbilt University Exoplanets: The Pace of Discovery and the Potential Impact on Humanity 2014 Donald W. Olson Texas State University Celestial Sleuth: Using Physics and Astronomy to Solve Mysteries in Art, History, and Literature 2011 James E. Hansen NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies Halting Human-Made Climate Change: The Case for Young People and Nature 2010 Robert Scherrer Vanderbilt University Science and Science Fiction 2009 Lee Smolin Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics The Role of the Scientist as a Public Intellectual 2008 Michio Kaku City University of New York Physics of the Impossible 2007 Neil deGrasse Tyson Astrophysicist and Director, Hayden Planetarium, American Museum of Natural History Adventures in Science Literacy 2006 Lisa Randall Harvard University Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions 2005 Wendy Freedman Carnegie Observatories The Accelerating Universe 2004 Anton Zeilinger University of Vienna Quantum Experiments: From Philosophical Curiosity to a New Technology 2003 Sylvester James Gates University of Maryland, College Park Why Einstein Would Love Spaghetti in Fundamental Physics 2002 Barry C. Barish California Institute of Technology Catching the Waves with LIGO 2001 Virginia Trimble University of California, Irvine Cosmology: Man's Place in the Universe 2000 Terrence P. Walker Ohio State University The Big Bang: Seeing Back to the Beginning 1999 Michael S. Turner University of Chicago Cosmology: From Quantum Fluctuations to the Expanding Universe 1998 Sidney R. Nagel The James Franck Institute Physics at the Breakfast Table - Or Waking Up to Physics 1997 Max Dresden Stanford University and Stanford Linear Accelerator Scales, Macroscopic, Microscopic, Mesoscopic: Their Autonomy and Interrelation 1996 Margaret Geller Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Optical Infrared Astronomy Division 1995 Peter Franken University of Arizona Municipal Waste, Recycling, and Nuclear Garbage 1994 N. David Mermin Cornell University More Quantum Magic 1993 Charles P. Bean Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute An Invitation to Table-Top Physics Inside and in the Open Air 1992 Gabriel Wienreich University of Michigan at Ann Arbor What Science Knows about Violins And What It Doesn't Know, Am. J. Phys. 61, 1067 (1993). 1991 Paul K. Hansma University of California, Santa Barbara Seeing Atoms with the New Generation of Microscopes, Am. J. Phys. 59, 1067 (1991).
See also
List of physics awards List of prizes named after people
References