Klopsteg Memorial Award
The Klopsteg Memorial Award is an annual prize given to a notable physicist in memory of Paul E. Klopsteg. Established in 1990, it is awarded by the American Association of Physics Teachers.
The Klopsteg Memorial Award recipient is asked to make a major presentation at an AAPT Summer Meeting on a topic of current significance suitable for non-specialists.
Award Winners
| Year | Awardee | Institution | Topic |
| 2020 | James Kakalios | University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN | Physics of Superheroes |
| 2019 | Jodi A. Cooley | Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX | |
| 2018 | Clifford V. Johnson | University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA | Black Holes and Time Travel in Your Everyday Life |
| 2017 | John C. Brown | University of Glasgow, Scotland | Black Holes and White Rabbits |
| 2016 | Margaret Wertheim | Institute for Figuring, Los Angeles, CA | Of Corals and the Cosmos: A Story of Hyperbolic Space |
| 2015 | David Weintraub | Vanderbilt University | Exoplanets: The Pace of Discovery and the Potential Impact on Humanity |
| 2014 | Donald W. Olson | Texas State University, San Marcos, TX | Celestial Sleuth: Using Physics and Astronomy to Solve Mysteries in Art, History, and Literature |
| 2011 | James E. Hansen | NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies | Halting Human-Made Climate Change: The Case for Young People and Nature |
| 2010 | Robert Scherrer | Vanderbilt University | Science and Science Fiction |
| 2009 | Lee Smolin | Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics | The Role of the Scientist as a Public Intellectual |
| 2008 | Michio Kaku | City University of New York | Physics of the Impossible |
| 2007 | Neil deGrasse Tyson | Astrophysicist and Director, Hayden Planetarium, American Museum of Natural History, New York | Adventures in Science Literacy |
| 2006 | Lisa Randall | Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, | Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions |
| 2005 | Wendy Freedman | Carnegie Observatories, Pasadena, CA | The Accelerating Universe |
| 2004 | Anton Zeilinger | University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria | Quantum Experiments: From Philosophical Curiosity to a New Technology |
| 2003 | Sylvester James Gates | University of Maryland, College Park, MD | Why Einstein Would Love Spaghetti in Fundamental Physics |
| 2002 | Barry C. Barish | California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA | Catching the Waves with LIGO |
| 2001 | Virginia Trimble | University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA | Cosmology: Man's Place in the Universe |
| 2000 | Terrence P. Walker | The Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH | The Big Bang: Seeing Back to the Beginning |
| 1999 | Michael S. Turner | University of Chicago | Cosmology: From Quantum Fluctuations to the Expanding Universe |
| 1998 | Sidney R. Nagel | The James Franck Institute | Physics at the Breakfast Table - Or Waking Up to Physics |
| 1997 | Max Dresden | Stanford University and Stanford Linear Accelerator | Scales, Macroscopic, Microscopic, Mesoscopic: Their Autonomy and Interrelation |
| 1996 | Margaret Geller | Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Optical Infrared Astronomy Division | - |
| 1995 | Peter Franken | University of Arizona | Municipal Waste, Recycling, and Nuclear Garbage |
| 1994 | N. David Mermin | Cornell University | More Quantum Magic |
| 1993 | Charles P. Bean | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York | An Invitation to Table-Top Physics Inside and in the Open Air |
| 1992 | Gabriel Wienreich | University of Michigan at Anne Arbor | What Science Knows about Violins And What It Doesn't Know, Am. J. Phys. 61, 1067. |
| 1991 | Paul K. Hansma | University of California at Santa Barbara | Seeing Atoms with the New Generation of Microscopes, Am. J. Phys. 59, 1067. |