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4/21/03

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION AWARDS GRANT TO SLU PROFESSOR

CANTON - The National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virginia, 
has awarded a research grant to St. Lawrence University Priest 
Associate Professor of Physics Karen E. Johnson, to assist her 
in writing a dual scientific biography of Nobel Prize-winning 
physicist Maria Goeppert Mayer and her husband, chemist Joseph 
Mayer.
	The Mayers worked in different disciplines, pursued different 
fields of research and rarely published collaborative work. 
Johnson's research to date has revealed, however, that over time, 
Joseph Mayer began to approach the study of chemistry from the 
perspective of a physicist, and Maria Goeppert Mayer began to 
approach physics from the perspective of a chemist. Johnson's 
biography will constitute a comprehensive examination and 
analysis of the lives, careers and choices of these two pre-eminent 
scientists of the 20th century.
	Johnson, a historian of science, has been a member of 
the St. Lawrence faculty since 1988. She holds a bachelor's degree 
from Grinnell College and a master's degree and Ph.D. from the 
University of Minnesota; she was appointed to the Henry Priest 
chair in physics at St. Lawrence in 1995. The 2003 Piskor Faculty 
Lecture, delivered by Johnson on the topic "Spontaneous Human 
Collaboration: Using Disciplinary Thinking to Study Interdisciplinary 
Work," also focused on the Mayers.
	The National Science Foundation, an independent agency of 
the United States government, funds research and education in science 
and engineering, through grants, contracts and cooperative agreements.

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