APS and The University of Arizona Jointly Announce Appointment of Pierre Meystre as Lead Editor, PRL

Ridge, NY, 13 June 2013 — The American Physical Society (APS) and the University of Arizona (UA) are very pleased to announce that Pierre Meystre, UA Regents’ Professor of Physics and of Optical Sciences, has been appointed Lead Editor of Physical Review Letters (PRL). Meystre succeeds Jack Sandweiss (Yale), who has held the position for 25 years, to lead the preeminent international letters journal in all areas of physics. "Pierre Meystre had every qualification that we were looking for in a new leader for PRL. His vision for the future of the journal was particularly compelling.” said Ulrich Heinz (The Ohio State University), chair of the search committee.

Meystre will begin as the PRL Lead Editor on 1 July 2013. In his letter to the search committee, Meystre stated: "Physical Review Letters is, in my opinion, the greatest physics journal. It is absolutely essential that this position be maintained and strengthened going forward in the face of a number of complex but interesting challenges."

"We are fortunate that Dr. Meystre will be leading PRL into the future," said Gene Sprouse, APS Editor in Chief. "His prior involvement with PRL and his strong editorial experience is very compelling. We look forward to Dr. Meystre following Jack Sandweiss as an inspirational leader for the journal."

Meystre is an APS Fellow and an Outstanding Referee of the Physical Review journals. He received his Ph.D. from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale, Lausanne, Switzerland. At UA, he is Director of the B2 Institute at Biosphere 2 and also Director of the Arizona Center for STEM Teachers. He joined the UA in 1986 as a professor of optical sciences and was Head of the UA Department of Physics from 2005 to 2007.

--Contact: Amy Halsted, Special Assistant to the Editor in Chief, halsted@aps.org, 631-591-4232.

About APS: The American Physical Society (www.aps.org) is a non-profit membership organization working to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics through its outstanding research journals, scientific meetings, and education, outreach, advocacy and international activities. APS represents 50,000 members, including physicists in academia, national laboratories and industry in the United States and throughout the world. Society offices are located in College Park, MD (Headquarters), Ridge, NY, and Washington, DC.

About The University of Arizona: (www.arizona.edu) Founded in 1885 as Arizona’s land-grant university, the University of Arizona is home to nearly 40,000 students – undergraduate and graduate – representing every state in the nation and 116 countries around the world. Teaching, research, outreach, student engagement, access and quality are the defining attributes of the UA’s mission. One of the country’s top 20 public research universities, the National Science Foundation ranks the University of Arizona no. 3 in the physical sciences.