2010 Seaborg Award: Lee G. Sobotka

Sobotka received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Michigan in 1977 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1982. After a postdoctoral stint at UC Berkeley, he joined the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis in 1984 and has made it his professional home.

On his departmental Web page, Lee G. Sobotka, 54, professor of chemistry and physics at Washington University in St. Louis, describes his research focus as “understanding, detecting and innovative uses of God’s Quantum Dots.” Those who nominated the award winner get more down to Earth when describing his development of novel technologies to attack important and difficult problems in basic nuclear science.

For example, Sobotka and D. G. Sarantites developed the Dwarf-Ball and Dwarf-Wall devices that allowed the first measurement with full 4π coverage for the emitted charged particles, for example, protons, deuterons, tritons, and α particles, that didn’t require forfeiting the ability to measure photons or neutrons in a surrounding device. This accomplishment required Sobotka to advance both detector technology and signal-processing electronics.

A colleague sums up Sobotka’s attributes: “While many scientists meld technology, experimentation, and nuclear modeling, Sobotka has spliced these together to an unrivaled degree. He attributes this to a mind-set of doing what has to be done, when it has to be done, with the resources one can realistically expect to have, while engaging like-minded collaborators who enjoy, as he does, all aspects of the science of discovery.”

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