Irving Lerch

Retired as Director of International Affairs, APS

Chair 

      

Irving Lerch I graduated from West Point in 1960 and served in the 101st Airborne Division, attending graduate school at the University of Chicago after concluding military service. I joined the faculty of the University after receiving the doctoral degree in biological and medical physics in 1969, focusing on research in radiation metrology, low-energy X-Ray spectroscopy, radiation biophysics and biomedical statistics. In 1973 I was seconded by the Energy Research and Development Agency (now Department of Energy) to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna as a program officer in the Division of Life Sciences in the Department of Research and Isotopes with developmental projects in East-Central Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. I returned to the US and a professorship at NYU where I headed the Department of Radiation Oncology Physics from 1976 through 1992. I continued to consult for the IAEA and WHO in Medical and Radiation Physics and in international development policy. In 1992 I took sabbatical leave from NYU to organize the international program of the APS and assumed the position of Director after retiring from NYU in 1993. I retired as Director of International Affairs at the end of 2003. I have served on numerous national and international boards and committees to include the chairmanship of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility, secretary of the US Liaison Committee to the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, member of the UNESCO Physics Action Council and Chair of its Working Group on Telecommunications Networks for Science, Board Member of the American Center for Physics and member of the Advisory Board of the International Science Foundation. I am currently administering a program to survey and improve science education in the Central Asian and Caucuses Nations of the former Soviet Union and am assisting UNESCO in the development of a university reconstruction program for Iraq. I have authored numerous scientific papers and reports in various areas of physics and international science policy.