Four Professors Named to Higher Faculty Ranks

David R. Nelson and Howard M. Georgi '67 each received tenure from the Department of Physics earlier this month.

"They add youth to the department and they add strength," Karl Strauch, Leverett Professor of Physics and chairman of the department, said yesterday.

Nelson, who was appointed to an associate professorship in 1978, specializes in the physics of condensed matter, while Georgi, who received an associate professorship in 1976, studies particle physics.

Regeneration

"The department always tries to get a new generation," Strauch said, adding that he expected the pair to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors, including Nobel Prize winners Sheldon L. Glashow, Professor of Physics, and Steven Weinberg, Higgins Professor of Physics. "We expect them to accomplish as much as those before them," Strauch added.

Nelson, who was unavailable for comment yesterday, will teach Physics 126, "Introductory Physics," next spring. Recently his research has focused on the transition between the solid and liquid phases of matter.

Along with Bertrand I. Halperin, Professor of Physics, Nelson has bee, searching for a new, intermediate phase of matter, the hexatic phase. "We should know in a year or so whether we have a new phase of matter," Nelson said recently.

Natural Unity

Georgi, who came to the University in 1971, has concentrated on the development of theories to unify the basic forces in nature.

Georgi is currently investigating how to use proton decay as a test of the unified theories.