2000 John P. McGovern Science and Society Award
David L. Goodstein is vice provost and professor of physics and applied physics at the California Institute of Technology. His book, States of Matter, first published in 1975 and reissued by Dover Press in 1985, was hailed by Physics Today as the book that launched a new discipline, condensed-matter physics. His service on scientific and academic panels includes the national advisory committee to the mathematical and physical sciences directorate of the National Science Foundation, which he chairs. He was also the host and project director of The Mechanical Universe, a 52-part college physics telecourse based on his popular lectures at Caltech. The project, which has been adapted for high-school use and translated into many other languages, has been broadcast on hundreds of public-broadcasting stations and has garnered more than a dozen prestigious awards, including the 1987 Japan Prize for television.