Hanna Visiting Professor Lecture Series

The Hanna Visiting Professorship honors nuclear physicist Stanley S. Hanna (1920 – 2012), who was born in Sagaing, Burma into a missionary family. Stan earned his BA at Denison University in Ohio, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. His graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University were interrupted by a year in the US Army at Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, after which he completed his PhD in physics under Gerhard Dieke. He taught at Johns Hopkins, carried out research at Argonne National Laboratory at the University of Chicago, and spent a year at Oxford University as a Guggenheim fellow. In 1963 he joined the physics faculty at Stanford, where he taught and conducted research until he retired in 1991.

Stan’s achievements, innovations, and pioneering insights into nuclear physics were acknowledged in many ways, including the chairmanship of the American Physical Society’s division of nuclear physics in 1976–77 and two research awards from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Especially meaningful to him, though, were invitations from universities and institutions all over the world to share his expertise. Both Marburg University and the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics welcomed Stan as a visiting researcher during his Humboldt Fellowships, and he enjoyed guest positions at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot in Israel, Osaka University in Japan, and the Strasbourg Nuclear Research Center in France, among others. He presented more than 100 invited lectures at conferences worldwide based on his 167 refereed journal articles. In these positions of teacher and researcher, as well as in his roles as advisor, colleague, consultant, and friend, Stan generously shared his knowledge, enthusiasm, and guidance. The Stanley S. Hanna Visiting Professorship makes it possible for Stanford to give similar recognition to world leaders in physics and enrich our students’ education with the most influential physics scholarship of the time. It is a fitting way to honor Stan Hanna’s legacy.