News | Department of Physics

A&S honors 13 faculty with endowed professorships

The professorships are made possible because of gifts from alumni, parents and friends.

Better basketball through theoretical physics?

A Cornell research team has employed a variation of a theory first used to predict the collective actions of electrons in quantum mechanical systems to a much taller, human system – the National Basketball Association.

A huge ring with electronic wiring going into the center, along with a ladder-like stairs.

One tiny particle could complicate predictions of physics theorists

The international, interdisciplinary team measured the magnetic anomaly of the muon – a tiny, elusive particle that could have very big implications for understanding the subatomic world.

Cornell undergraduate students diagnosing wine grape diseases in a plant pathology laboratory in Chile.

Cornell STEM education expert weighs in on NSF funding cuts

"Students across the country are going to miss out on innovative improvements to their science education – innovations that would have critically prepared them for the competitive 21st century technological workforce."

'I love the whimsy of wave equations'

Sabrina McDowell is a physics major.

'I'm proud of my contributions to understanding the stability of insect flight'

Owen Wetherbee is a physics, mathematics & computer science major.

Person in blue shirt stands in front of complicated silver equipment

Klarman Fellow honored for outstanding achievement in physics

Paul Malinowski received the 2025 Martin and Beate Block Winter Award from the Aspen Center for Physics.

Don Hartill, longtime physics professor, Lansing mayor, dies at 86

Donald Hartill, a professor of physics emeritus in the College of Arts and Sciences and a driving force behind decades of experimental research in particle physics, died on April 16. He was 86.

Alum still lives in the house Frank Lloyd Wright designed for him

Centenarian Roland Reisley ’46, BA ’45, an A&S physics alum, has resided in the Hudson Valley home for more than seven decades.

Cornell Celebrates Breakthrough Prize for LHC Collaborations

Cornell researchers are helping upgrade the CMS detector at CERN, as LHC collaborations win the 2024 Breakthrough Prize for fundamental physics discoveries.

Inside arXiv—the Most Transformative Platform in All of Science

Modern science wouldn’t exist without the online research repository known as arXiv, Sheon Han writes in a Wired feature about arXiv's creator Paul Ginsparg, professor of physics.

Red buds on black branches in the foreground with a clock tower in the distance

Five early-career professors win NSF development awards

Researchers studying novel traits in organisms and the fundamental understanding of extreme weather are among the five Cornell assistant professors who've received National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Awards.

Quantum mechanics with a twist: spring 2025 Bethe lecture

Physicist Shahal Ilani will introduce the emerging field of twistronics, which is revolutionizing our ability to harness quantum phenomena, during a public lecture April 9.

Patches of dark blue, turquoise and orange scattered on a grid of black broken lines, with an oxagonal and a star-shaped line drawing next to it.

Clearest images yet of 380,000-year-old baby universe released

The new results confirm a simple model of the universe and have ruled out a majority of competing alternatives, says the research team.

Person holding a microphone and a certificate

Eight students advance to 3MT finals

Students from several graduate fields, including physics in A&S, will compete in the final round of the 2025 Three Minute Thesis competition (3MT) on March 19.

Three people cluster around a computer in a science lab

Peer recognition crucial for success in physics research

Even when women receive similar amounts of recognition from peers as men for excelling in physics classes, they perceive significantly less peer recognition, new research has found.

Solar solutions: Bio-inspired approach creates bespoke photovoltaics

What if photovoltaic panels were a hinged, lightweight fabric that was aesthetically attractive and could wrap around complex shapes to better absorb sunlight?

Two people standing at a chalk board, talking about a graphic

Mentorship series: Rebeckah Fussell and Natasha Holmes

In a series of interviews with faculty-graduate student pairs, the Cornell University Graduate School spoke with Rebeckah Fussell, a Ph.D. candidate in physics, and Natasha Holmes, Ann S. Bowers Associate Professor of physics.

X-ray study sheds light on cost-effective fuel cell materials

Cornell researchers have captured an unprecedented, real-time view of how a promising catalyst material transforms during operation, providing new insights that could lead to replacement of expensive precious metals in clean-energy technologies.

Orange red and white horizontal streaks of light under a dark blue sky, showing automobile traffic in motion at night

New Klarman Fellows to join the College of Arts and Sciences

Fellows will pursue research in the sciences, social sciences and humanities.

Light-activated micro device expands ‘green’ electrochemistry

Cornell chemists and nanofabrication experts have joined forces to create a 2 millimeter-wide, wireless, light-activated device to simplify electrochemistry for broad use.

Close up of white slats, each with a black paddle at the end

Micromachines autonomously coordinate using electronic pulses

Microscopic machines engineered by Cornell researchers can autonomously synchronize their movements, opening new possibilities for the use of microrobots in drug delivery, chemical mixing and environmental remediation, among other applications.

Three people look intensely at a small black and red machine in a science laboratory

Smallest walking robot makes microscale measurements

Cornell researchers in physics and engineering have created the smallest walking robot yet. Its mission: to be tiny enough to interact with waves of visible light and still move independently, so that it can maneuver, and take images and measurements.

Person wearing a yellow life jacket, standing up in a boat

New course sets sail on understanding physics–by boat

Students venture out onto Cayuga Lake for hands-on learning about wind speed, velocity, buoyancy, and more

A field of connected hexagons against a dark gray background

Revealing the superconducting limit of ‘magic’ material

Cornell researchers have identified the highest achievable superconducting temperature of graphene – 60 Kelvin. The finding is mathematically exact and is spurring new insights into the factors that fundamentally control superconductivity.

Physicist Yuval Grossman elected to American Physical Society

Yuval Grossman, professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been elected as a fellow of the American Physical Society for seminal contributions in “flavor” physics.

Peter Lepage, wearing a black vest, stands in front of a large group of people assembled to talk about physics and honor his work

Two-day ‘LepageFest’ honors physicist and former dean of A&S

The conference focused on the current status and future of heavy quark physics while highlighting the science Lepage has done throughout his career.

Student spotlight: Elijah Sheridan

Elijah Sheridan, a doctoral student in physics from Lansing, Michigan, studies string theory under the guidance of Liam McAllister at Cornell.

John Hopfield, Ph.D. ’58, wins Nobel Prize in physics

Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton of the University of Toronto were honored for their work in training artificial neural networks.

Leading particle physicist headlines fall 2024 Bethe Lectures

Beate Heinemann, professor at Universität Hamburg and director for particle physics at DESY in Germany, will share the stories of two outstanding women scientists in a public lecture.

movie poster: The Man Who Saved the Internet with a Sunflower

Indie drama depicts Cornellian couple's role in web history

Set in the 1980s, The Man Who Saved the Internet with a Sunflower chronicles two ’69 classmates in Silicon Valley

Active Learning Initiative welcomes new director, says goodbye to longtime leader

In June 2024, longtime Active Learning Initiative director Peter Lepage handed the initiative's reins to incoming director, Timothy Riley, professor of mathematics.

yello triangles with holes punched in them, all conntected, on a blue background

Microscale kirigami robot folds into 3D shapes and crawls

Researchers created a robot less than 1 millimeter in size that is printed as a 2D hexagonal “metasheet” but, with a jolt of electricity, morphs into preprogrammed 3D shapes and crawls.

New Faculty: Jennet Dickinson

Jennet Dickinson, Physics

From portfolios to pizza, fall A&S career events explore diverse fields

"Cornell alumni are generous with their time and efforts to assist students, to answer questions from students, or connect them to people and places."

About six students sit in desks and interact using a blue Solo cup while an instructor stands by

NSF-funded postdocs to research education across disciplines

Engaging with a whole set of mentors will allow the CIDER postdocs to approach questions about student learning and experiences across disciplinary boundaries and use techniques from multiple fields.

Glowing dot surrounded by illuminated orbits against a sparkly blue background

Sound drives ‘quantum jumps’ between electron orbits

Cornell researchers have demonstrated that acoustic sound waves can be used to control the motion of an electron as it orbits a lattice defect in a diamond, a technique that can potentially improve the sensitivity of quantum sensors and be used in other quantum devices.

Dean Peter Loewen posing behind the A.D. White statue on the Arts Quad

New A&S dean relishes ‘life in a university’

Peter John Loewen says he's excited to support faculty in their research, meet students and showcase the value of a liberal arts education.

Faculty, students pair up for summer Nexus Scholar research projects

More students can afford to stay on campus to work in faculty labs during the summer thanks to generous alumni.

Research equipment at the Cornell High-Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS).

DOE funds new Cornell accelerator science trainee program

The program’s goal is to “produce a diverse body of broadly educated fellows” in areas targeted by DOE’s Office of Science, including RF superconducting structures, high brightness electron sources for linear accelerators, physics of large accelerators and system engineering, and operation of large-scale accelerator systems.

A&S honors 10 faculty with endowed professorships

With these new appointments, the number of A&S faculty appointed to endowed professorships since fall 2018 has reached 76.

Two people lean toward a complicated scientific instrument featuring gold and orange metal parts; it's about the size of a coffeemaker

Simons Observatory begins measurements to probe Big Bang inflation

The new Simons Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert may soon answer the great scientific question of what happened in the tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang.

Peter Loewen named dean of Arts and Sciences

Coming from the University of Toronto, where he was the director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, Loewen began his five-year appointment as the Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Aug. 1.

Three doctoral students selected for Department of Energy program

Virginia McGhee, doctoral candidate in chemistry and chemical biology; and Liana Shpani, doctoral candidate in physics, are two of three Cornell doctoral students selected for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science Graduate Student Research (DOE SCGSR) Program’s 2023 Solicitation 2 Cycle.