Professer Davison E. Soper, most recent past chair of the Physics Department, is a 2009 recipient of the J.J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Physics. He will share the prize with John Collins (Penn State) and Keith Ellis (Fermilab) when presented formally in May during the American Physical Society's annual meeting in Denver. Soper was cited for his "work in perturbative quantum chromodynamics, including applications to problems pivotal to the interpretation of high-energy particle collisions."

Quantum chromodynamics is the theory of the strong interaction. The prize honors J.J. Sakarai, a Japanese-American particle physicist who authored leading textbooks on quantum mechanics and the principles of elementary particles during a career at the University of Chicago and UCLA. From its inception in 1985 to 2008, 36 physicists have won the Sakurai Prize, including six who later won the Nobel Prize.