Today President Clinton named Michael E. Phelps, inventor of the PETscan and chair of UCLA's Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology,winner of the Enrico Fermi Award, the government's oldest science and technologyprize.

Clinton also named Maurice Goldhaber, a nuclear and particle physicistand the first person to accurately measure the mass of the neutron, asa recipient of the award.

The Enrico Fermi Award honors a lifetime of achievement in the fieldof nuclear energy. Phelps and Goldhaber will each receive a gold medallionand a $100,000 honorarium from U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson duringan awards ceremony in April in Washington, D.C.

Phelps, 59, is the inventor of PET (positron emission tomography), amedical imaging technique that allows doctors and scientists to watch humanbiological processes in health and disease, in essence making human biologytransparent. PET scanning -- now the standard for studying the metabolismof the brain, the heart and cancer -- provides improved diagnosis for disorderssuch as epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, cardiovasculardisease and cancer, including lung, colorectal, breast, brain, ovarian,melanoma and prostate cancers.

Phelps and colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis developedthe first PET scanner in 1973, before coming to UCLA in 1976 to build theworld's leading PET program. Phelps established the first PET clinic forpatient care at UCLA, of which there now are more than 800 worldwide.

"It is a privilege to honor these scientists and their pioneeringresearch," said President Clinton. "Dr. Goldhaber's work hascontributed significantly to our understanding of the way the world works.Dr. Phelps made possible an innovative technology that has improved medicalresearch and health care."

Phelps, holder of the Norton Simon Professorship, joined the UCLA facultyin 1976 and became the chair of the Department of Molecular and MedicalPharmacology in 1992. He is the director of the Crump Institute for BiologicalImaging, associate director of the UCLA/DOE Laboratory of Structural Biologyand Molecular Medicine, and chief of nuclear medicine at UCLA.

"The work of Mike Phelps represents the best of what UCLA has tooffer," said UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale. "His researchin developing and refining PET has given us new insights into human biologyand advanced medical care for countless patients. He also has been an innovatorin education and an active voice in encouraging young investigators topursue their own dreams."

Phelps is the third member of the UCLA School of Medicine faculty toreceive the Fermi Award. Dr. Stafford L. Warren, the founding dean of theUCLA School of Medicine, received the award in 1971 for his early contributionsto the fields of biology and nuclear medicine. Warren was chief of themedical section of the Manhattan Project, the task force that created theatomic bomb. Dr. H. Rodney Withers, chair of UCLA's Department of RadiationOncology, was among the recipients of the Fermi award when it was lastgiven in 1997.

"We are extremely proud of this honor that the President has givento Mike Phelps," said Dr. Gerald Levey, UCLA's provost of medicalsciences and dean of the UCLA School of Medicine. "His intellect,skill and enthusiasm helped move PET scanning from a revolutionary newconcept to becoming a mainstay of medical research and treatment. His workhas provided new insights into the biology of many diseases, includingAlzheimer's disease, epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, cardiovascular diseaseand cancer."

"I am deeply honored to receive this award," Phelps said."I would like to acknowledge my colleague Edward Hoffman, who workedwith me when we developed the first PET scanner, as well as my many othercolleagues here at UCLA who have contributed so much to the success ofPET."

"PET was created to allow scientists and physicians from differentdisciplines to come together to develop ways to study the biology of diseaseas it takes place in the ultimate laboratory -- the living human body,"Phelps said. "I think my receiving this award underscores the powerand importance of having people from a wide variety of disciplines -- chemistry,physics, mathematics, biology, medicine -- working together toward solvingbiological problems.

"Disease is a biological process and PET images these biologicalprocesses of the human body for early diagnosis, even prior to symptomsin some cases, and provides critical information to better define the natureof disease for selection of the best therapies, as well as to develop newones."

Phelps received undergraduate degrees in chemistry and mathematics fromWestern Washington University and his Ph.D. in chemistry from WashingtonUniversity in St. Louis in 1970. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine,the National Academy of Sciences, chaired the 1983 Nobel Symposium andis a recipient of the Ernest O. Lawrence Presidential Award, the GeorgeVon Hevesy Prize, the Rosenthal Award from the American College of Physicians,the Aebersold Award from the Society of Nuclear Medicine and the SarahPoiley Award from the New York Academy of Sciences, among many others.

Begun in 1956, the Fermi Award honors the memory of Enrico Fermi, leaderof the group of scientists who achieved the first self-sustained, controllednuclear reaction at the University of Chicago in 1952. As nuclear sciencehas broadened through the years, the award has been given to scientistsfrom such diverse fields as physics, chemistry, medicine, astronomy, archeologyand environmental science. The Energy Department administers the awardfor the White House.

Goldhaber, 87, is distinguished scientist emeritus at the Departmentof Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and adjunct Professor at theState University of New York at Stony Brook. Early in his career, he wasthe first to measure accurately the mass of the neutron. His later experimentsprovided key support for the Standard Model, the theory of fundamentalparticles and forces. While director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory,he presided over an extraordinary period of scientific discovery at thelaboratory.

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