By Tiffany Whitfield

Eminent Scholar and Professor of Physics Charles E. Hyde, Ph.D., received the 2024 Virginia Scientist of the Year Award for the Physical Sciences by the Virginia Academy of Sciences. The award ceremony was held at the Virginia Museum of Science in Richmond on Nov. 15.

This prestigious award is given to Virginia scientists who have accomplished outstanding research over the last five years in physical sciences, such as chemistry, physics and geology, that has benefited the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Hydes expertise is in nuclear physics, and he conducts experiments primarily at Jefferson Lab in Newport News. He describes his work as using a single electron in the beam to illuminate an individual atomic nucleus (primarily a proton) and take a picture by detecting the rare events emitting a high energy gamma-ray a process called Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering (DVCS). His most recent experiment used a new 1,000-pixel gamma-ray camera made of 1,000 specialized crystals.

This award is a well-deserved recognition of the intellectual leadership of Dr. Hyde in the scientific program of the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF or Jefferson Lab) in Newport News, Virginia and beyond, said Sebastian Kuhn, Physics chair and professor. According to Kuhn, Dr. Hyde was a driving force for the upgrade of TJNAF to 12 GeV beam energy, which enables the highest precision DVCS measurements worldwide. He is also one of the leaders of the next large facility in nuclear physics, the Electron Ion Collider (EIC).

Hyde has taken on complicated scientific challenges and been at the forefront of solving problems. He was one of the first physicists worldwide to recognize the power of DVCS experiments, which are akin to taking a hologram of fundamental particles like protons, and he has been spearheading the effort to realize these very challenging experiments for 30 years.

Charles Hyde has been a leader in nuclear physics for decades, said Gail Dodge, dean of the College of Sciences. We are very proud of his accomplishments and of this very well-deserved recognition.

The full list of awardees is:

  • Physical Science Award to Dr. Charles Hyde at 惇蹋圖
  • Wildlife and Biodiversity Award to Dr. W. Mark Fork at Virginia Tech
  • Environmental Science Award to Dr. R. Christian Jones at George Mason University
  • Life Science Award to Dr. Frank Aylward at Virginia Tech

The Virginia Academy of Science was founded on April 26, 1923, by 135 scientists and science educators who convened at The College of William and Mary. In the ten decades since, the VAS has nurtured successive generations of scientists, advocated for science education, supported scientific research and promoted science-based decision-making in our commonwealth and in society.