Lisa Pratt, professor of geological sciences, has been named Provost's Professor for 2009.

IU professors Clemmer and Pratt to be honored at Sonneborn Lecture and Provost's Professor event

David E. Clemmer, the Robert and Marjorie Mann Chair of Chemistry at Indiana University Bloomington and the 2009 recipient of the prestigious Tracy M. Sonneborn Award at IU, and Lisa Pratt, IU professor of geological sciences and the inaugural IU Provost's Professor, will be recognized at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 8 (Thursday), in the Indiana Memorial Union's Frangipani Room.

Clemmer will present the Sonneborn Lecture, "Measurements for the Masses," shortly after 5:30 p.m. The lecture and a reception afterward are free and open to the public.

Clemmer's lecture will provide a brief history of how measurements of mass evolved and impacted the fields of physics and chemistry.

"Near the turn of the 20th century a small group of physicists were grappling with understanding positive rays of electricity," said Clemmer in a written description of his lecture. "Many of the ideas that emerged at this time were based on a new type of measurement -- the determination of particles' mass-to-charge ratios in an instrument called a mass spectrometer. Advances in these measurements led mass spectrometers to be used widely across the petroleum and chemical industries."

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