TWO U.VA. SCIENTISTS RECOGNIZED BY COMMONWEALTH

	CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Feb. 19 -- A biologist and a physicist
from the University of Virginia are among six individuals named today
by the Science Museum of Virginia and the Commonwealth as recipients
of the state's highest science awards.  Oscar L. Miller Jr., the Lewis
and Clark Professor of Biology and a member of the National Academy of
Sciences, was given the Life Achievement Award and Thomas F.
Gallagher, the Jesse W. Beams Professor of Physics, was named a 1997
Virginia Outstanding Scientist.  The two will be honored in a ceremony
before the General Assembly at the State Capitol at noon on Wednesday,
Feb. 19.
	Oscar L. Miller Jr., who began teaching at the University in
1973, developed a widely used technique for using electron microscopes
to view genetic material at the moment when certain genes are active.
Called Miller spreading, the technique was developed by Miller and
colleagues at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the late 1960's.
Miller first studied the nuclei of amphibian eggs and -- through a
combination of detailed understanding of egg maturation, patience and,
he says, some luck -- he succeeded in taking electron micrographs of
the eggs' DNA during the time that it was actively transcribing a
portion of its information into a related material called RNA.  In
effect, Miller's technique took a blindfold off scientists enabling
them, for the first time, to see directly how a key cellular function
actually happens.  
	Miller retired from active research at the time of his 70th
birthday two years ago, but he continues to teach a very popular
course -- Seeing Genes in Action -- to first-year undergraduates each
year.  He is also actively involved in both advising undergraduates
and helping to link students with researchers at the Health Sciences
Center here.   	 
	Among the numerous research interests of Thomas F. Gallagher,
a Virginia Outstanding Scientist of 1997, is the study of Rydberg
atoms.  Rydberg atoms, named for a 19th century Swedish physicist, are
strange objects that inhabit the shadowy space between the ordinary
world of classical physics, where objects like baseballs and planets
follow predictable paths, and the world of quantum physics, where
atomic and subatomic entities such as quarks reside.  Rydberg atoms
are ones in which one electron has been endowed with so much energy
that it is pushed far away from its normal position relatively near
the nucleus.  If the nucleus is imagined as the sun of the solar
system, then an electron in a Rydberg atom travels in an orbit more
than 1,000 times farther from the nucleus than Pluto is from our sun.
Rydberg atoms attract physicists' attention because they provide a way
to study chemical reactions and atomic collisions that, in nature,
happen too quickly to observe in any other way. 
	It is difficult to find these giant atoms in the world around
us, but Gallagher creates them by applying laser beams that are both
powerful and precise.  He has managed to bring Rydberg atoms into
resonance in an electric field.  When two Rydberg atoms are "tuned" or
"resonating" with one another, the energy exchanged between the two is
exactly balanced.  This resonant energy transfer is the basis for
helium neon and carbon dioxide lasers, widely used in surgery, office
work and warfare, but it has not previously been possible to
systematically study the resonant energy transfer in how such lasers.
	Gallagher came to the University of Virginia in 1984 and was
appointed to the position of Jesse W. Beams Professor of Physics in
1991.  Among his recent awards is the Davisson-Germer Prize, which was
given to him by the American Physical Society last year for his work
on Rydberg atoms.
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February 18, 1997
	Reporters and Editors:  Contact Oscar Miller at (804)
982-5770, olm@virginia.edu or 
Thomas Gallagher at (804) 924-6817, tfg@virginia.edu.  Television
reporters should call our TV News Office at (804) 924-7550.