Witten Scores in Essay Contest

SSU physics major Alan Witten has won a prize in the annual essay contest sponsored by the Griffith Observer, a popular astronomy magazine published by the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. Witten will receive a cash prize, and his article on the International Space Station, originally written for Professor Sam Greene’s Extraterrestrial Intelligence and Interstellar Travel course, will appear in the magazine.

Al earned his first B.S. in electrical engineering at CSU, Los Angeles. After working in the defense industry for a few years, he and his wife founded a coffee distribution business, which they sold 22 years later. Al will receive a B.A. in physics in May 1999, after which he plans to seek both a management position in industry and an MBA at SSU.

The prize is the eighth in the annual contest to be won by a paper written in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Students Reiko Hibbett Crane, Donald W. Martin (’83), and Annabel Ayres scored with papers originally written for Dr. Joe Tenn’s astronomy classes, and Dr. Tenn has won four prizes. In addition, Katherine Rhode (’89), now a graduate student in astronomy at Yale University, won a prize shortly after graduation, while Miriam Carolin (’82) won one with a brief version of her master’s thesis in history.