Elizabeth Nabel will succeed Claude Lenfant as director of the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. February 7 – The National Academy of Sciences elects Ralph Cicerone as its next president, to begin his 6-year term on July 1. He takes over from Bruce Alberts. February 25 – Robert Kirby-Harris is appointed as Chief Executive of the UK's Institute of Physics. – Keith Mason is appointed as the new head of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council in the UK. – Daniel Höchli is appointed director of the Swiss National Science Foundation. April 13 – Michael D. Griffin is confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the next NASA administrator, succeeding Sean O'Keefe. December 6 – Kaname Ikeda is appointed as first Director General of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. Other events February 8 – Yale University wins more than $1 million in damages and attorney's fees, along with the patent rights relating to electrospray ionization from former professor and Nobel Prize winner John Fenn. Publications Jorge E. Hirsch publishes his proposal for an h-index to quantify a scientist's publication productivity. Deaths February 3 – Ernst Mayr (b. 1904), German-American evolutionary biologist. February 6 – Hubert Curien (b. 1924), French physicist, President of CERN and first chairman of ESA. February 10 – D. Allan Bromley (b. 1926), Canadian-American director of Yale's A. W. Wright Nuclear Structure Laboratory. March 6 – Hans Bethe (b. 1906), German-American Nobel laureate in Physics (1967) for his discoveries concerning the energy production mechanism in stars. March 31 – Stanley J. Korsmeyer (b. 1950), American cell biologist. June 20 Charles David Keeling (b. 1928), American climate scientist, first to make frequent measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration, plotted on the Keeling Curve. Jack Kilby (b. 1923), American electronics engineer, Nobel laureate in Physics (2000) for his work on integrated circuits. July 16 – John Ostrom (b. 1928), American paleontologist, pioneer of the "dinosaur renaissance". August 21 – Robert Moog (b. 1934), pioneer of electronic music. August 31 – Sir Joseph Rotblat (b. 1908), Polish-born British nuclear physicist, Nobel laureate in Peace. October 28 – Richard Smalley (b. 1943), American Nobel laureate in Chemistry (1996) for the discovery of a new form of carbon, Buckminsterfullerene. November 16 – Henry Taube (b. 1915), Canadian-American Nobel laureate in Chemistry (1983) for his work in the mechanisms of electron transfer reactions, especially in metal complexes. External links The