Herman Winick (right) and fellow Sakharov Prize winner Morris (Moishe) Pripstein, at the APS April Meeting in Washington, DC. (Photo by Calla Cofield.)
At the 2010 April Meeting of the American Physical Society last week in Washington DC, SLAC physicist Herman Winick accepted the Andrei Sakharov Prize, given to a physicist for outstanding leadership and/or achievements in upholding human rights. Also accepting the award was Joseph Birman of the City College of New York and the City University of New York, and Morris (Moishe) Pripstein, of the National Science Foundation.
Winick is a founding member of the Synchrotron light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME) collaboration, a synchrotron facility currently under construction in Jordan. The SESAME collaboration will consist of scientists from 9 Middle Eastern countries, some of which are currently engaged in conflicts with each other, with other nations, or internally. Winick said he hopes that the SESAME collaboration, along with bringing a third-generation light source to an area which currently does not have such a facility, will foster relationships between people from these countries. And not just scientists: Winick wants to have SESAME used as an international meeting facility for topics other than science. Collaborations like these may ultimately lead SESAME scientists to take up a practice that Winick has exercised many times before: to defend their international colleagues if they are persecuted by their home governments. Winick shared the story of one such colleague during his acceptance speech.
In 2001 Winick was communicating regularly with Mohamed Hadi Hadizadeh, a native Iranian physicist whom everyone just called “Hadi.” The two were working on plans for SESAME together when Hadizadeh’s emails suddenly stopped coming. Winick waited for communication, but instead heard from Hadiadeh's wife, who told Winick the Iranian government had put her husband in jail on charges of planning to overthrow the government.
“This stunned me,” said Winick. “How could someone that they knew [was] dedicated to…improving conditions in Iran be punished so severely?”
Winick and a group of supporters worked furiously to have Hadizadeh freed from prison. They started an international letter-writing campaign and eventually gathered written support from 34 Nobel laureates. “I had helped other scientists and other dissidents,” Winick continued. “However, this was the first time I was helping someone with whom I had a working relationship and a friendship, who was being severely persecuted for opinions which I shared.”
Hadizadeh was released on bail and returned to teaching, but was soon given a sentence of almost nine years in prison. As is often done in Iran, the government did not imprison Hadizadeh right away, but have the right to arrest him and send him to prison at any time.
Winick worked with a group of international physicists, some from the SESAME collaboration, to find temporary work opportunities for Hadizadeh in Japan, Jordan and Italy, so that he and his family could leave Iran. Hadizadeh and his family then moved to the United States; where they remained for five years while Hadizadeh taught and did research at the University of Ohio. They stayed with Winick and his family, as have many international scientists who came to the US under similar conditions.
Today, Hadizadeh, his wife, and one of their daughters have returned to Iran, while his oldest daughter is completing her PhD in physics at Northwestern University. Hadizadeh may still be called to go to prison. Winick said he believes that if Hadizadeh were imprisoned, many international physicists and scholars would come to his aid.
“Individual scientists like myself, and professional societies like APS and ACS, play an important role in supporting colleagues who are persecuted by government,” Winick continued. “Scientists have helped dissidents leave danger in their home countries and find employment in other countries, allowing them to continue to function as scientists.” He praised the program Scholars at Risk, created by New York University, which raises funds to support academics and their families who flee persecution in their home countries and seek sanctuary in the United States.
The Sakharov Prize was established in honor of Russian physicist Andrei Sakharov, who actively called for nuclear arms control during the Cold War. His actions lead to the loss of many of his own personal freedoms, while also earning him a Nobel Peace Prize in 1975.
Herman Winick is a Professor emeritus at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and the Applied Physics Department of Stanford University, where he has been since 1973. After receiving his AB (1953) and PhD (1957) in physics from Columbia University, he continued work in experimental high energy physics at the University of Rochester (1957-9) and then as a member of the scientific staff and Assistant Director of the Cambridge Electron Accelerator at Harvard University (1959-73). In the early 1960’s his interests shifted to accelerator physics and synchrotron radiation, moving to Stanford University in 1973 to take charge of the technical design of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Project. For the past 30 years he has played a leadership role in the development of synchrotron radiation sources and research at Stanford and around the world. He has served, and often chaired, review and advisory committees for projects in Armenia, Australia, China, Germany, India, Japan, Jordan, Russia, Taiwan, Thailand and the US. (From the Forum on International Physics).
