Message from the Department Head4 New Faculty6 Faculty Notes10 News & Events in Physics13 Student Honors & Awards17 Alumni/ae Notes34 Giving to the Department of Physics55 Donors60

Emeritus in a Flash 22 Five years ago, eminent atomic physicist and Lester Wolfe Professor of Physics Daniel Kleppner publicly chastised, by means of a Physics Today essay, his fictitious colleague, "Professor X," who obstinately balked at retirement. Now completing his own first year of emeritus status, the Director of the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms reflects upon his experiences from the other side of the retirement "fence." BY DANIEL KLEPPNER Quantum Information: Joining the Foundations of Physics and Computer Science 26 A pioneer of quantum information science, experimentalist Isaac Chuang of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms describes how the unlikely, but rewarding, exchange of ideas between physics and computer science has opened the door to an exciting new scientific realm.. BY ISAAC CHUANG From Vibrating Strings to a Unified Theory of All Interactions 30 Distinguished physicist Barton Zwiebach takes us on a tour of string theory, from a description of the first vibrations of the string, to the emergence of extra dimensions, gravity and quarks. BY BARTON ZWIEBACH