KUDOS

UCLA heart surgeon Hillel Laks, professor and chief of cardiothoracic surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, was recognized at the inaugural American Heart Awards’ “Paint the Town Red Gala,” held on July 27 to benefit the American Heart Association. Laks was honored with the “Excellence in Cardiovascular Surgical Advancement” award, which recognizes an outstanding individual who has elevated national awareness of cardiovascular surgical advancement.... The American Federation for Aging Research and the Alliance for Aging Research named Jurgen Unutzer, associate professor of psychiatry at the Neuropsychiatric Institute and David Geffen School of Medicine, a 2002-05 Paul Beeson Physician Faculty Scholar. A three-year faculty-development award of $450,000 was given to Unutzer, a geriatric psychiatrist and researcher who directs a national study of quality improvement for late-life depression in primary care.... Michael E. Phelps and Jorge Barrio of the David Geffen School of Medicine were recognized at the Society of Nuclear Medicine’s annual conference for their groundbreaking inventions in nuclear medicine. Phelps, the Norton Simon professor and chair of the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, earned the 2002 Cassen Prize, considered the Nobel Prize of nuclear medicine. The prize recognizes his invention of the positron emission tomography (PET) scanner. Barrio, a professor of molecular and medical pharmacology, received the 2002 Aebersold Award for lifetime achievement in the basic sciences. He was recognized for inventing a new molecular probe and combining it with PET to create the first technique to image early signs of Alzheimer’s disease in the living brain.

APPLAUSE

Jeffrey Cooper, assistant to the director of the College of Letters and Science’s Academic Advancement Program, received the Jeanne Williams Administrative Service Award from the UCLA Staff Assembly. The annual award recognizes a staff member who has contributed significantly to the quality of administrative operations on a campuswide level. Allan J. Tobin, director of the Brain Research Institute, was awarded Staff Assembly’s Faculty/Staff Partnership Award.... Nikki Keddie, professor emerita of history, received the American Historical Association Award for Scholarly Distinction for her work in Middle East studies. Author of the well-received book “Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran,” she is considered a pioneer in two areas: the social and intellectual history of the modern Middle East and gender in Middle East history.

IN MEMORIAM

Senior Lecturer David Cohen died on May 21 after a long battle with leukemia. He was 59. He received his B.A. in mathematics from UCLA in 1965 and, following two years of teaching for the Peace Corps in Nigeria, received a master’s degree from San Francisco State University in 1971. He continued graduate work in mathematics at the University of Hawaii during 1972-73 and joined UCLA’s Mathematics Department in January 1974 as a lecturer in charge of the department’s remedial program. Cohen quickly earned a reputation as an excellent and effective teacher and soon became director of the precalculus program and a summer program for incoming students, as well as providing advice on other courses at the freshman level. The problems and notes that he prepared for his precalculus course eventually became the basis for several successful textbooks. As an instructor, Cohen maintained very high standards for his students, yet developed an outstanding rapport with them. In 1986, Cohen received the UCLA non-Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award. In 1993, the Southern California Section of the Mathematical Association of America nominated Cohen for the association’s national teaching award. His precalculus textbooks won high praise from reviewers nationwide for their problem-oriented approach. He was promoted to senior lecturer at UCLA in 1999.

Kenneth Ross MacKenzie, who taught physics at UCLA for more than four decades, died July 3 at his home in Los Angeles of complications after a stroke. He was 90. As a doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley under atomic scientist Ernest O. Lawrence, MacKenzie was one of the men who discovered element 85 of the periodic table: astatine. The radioactive substance, formed by bombarding an isotope of bismuth with alpha particles, helped verify the accuracy of the table. MacKenzie also helped his mentor build the first cyclotron at what is now the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory. As World War II neared, MacKenzie was assigned to help solve the problem of large-scale separation of uranium-235 at the federal Oak Ridge, Tenn., laboratory, a crucial step in the Manhattan Project to create the atom bomb. Adapting needs to wartime shortages, MacKenzie and his colleagues borrowed 14,700 tons of silver from the U.S. Treasury and melted it into strands to replace copper in their magnetic coils. After the war, the silver was melted into bullion and returned to the treasury. MacKenzie joined the UCLA faculty in 1947 and helped install Lawrence’s original cyclotron, the first atom smasher of its kind in the world, which was shipped from Berkeley to Westwood. In 1955, he directed construction of a 49-inch cyclotron for UCLA and formally retired the Lawrence device. By 1958, MacKenzie and his colleague, Byron Wright, had developed such expertise in building cyclotrons that they formed MEVA Corp. to build cyclotrons for teaching physics. They also constructed a seven-ton model magnet and power supply for the Naval Radiological Defense Lab in San Francisco. Their firm was later bought by Hughes Aircraft Co. When MacKenzie turned to studying plasma gases for use in fusion energy, he founded UCLA’s Plasma Physics Laboratory. He focused his research and teaching on fusion technology and studying dark matter. As an emeritus professor, he continued his research long after leaving the classroom.