Physicist Robert Johnson elected Fellow of American Physical Society

robert johnson
Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson, professor of physics at UC Santa Cruz, has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in recognition of his exceptional contributions to physics.

Johnson works in the areas of experimental particle physics and high-energy astrophysics and is associate director of the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics (SCIPP). The APS citation recognizes him "for his leadership of the design and implementation of the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) Tracker." The LAT is the primary instrument on NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Johnson led a SCIPP team that spent nearly 16 years working on the gamma-ray detecting system for the LAT. Since the launch of Fermi in 2008, his group has been involved in analyzing data from the instrument.

Election as an APS Fellow is a distinct honor signifying recognition by one's professional peers. Each year, elected fellows number no more than one-half of one percent of APS membership. APS represents over 50,000 members, including physicists in academia, national laboratories and industry in the United States and throughout the world.