2008 Rosenblatt Recipient

Robert A. Goldberg

B.A., Ph.D., professor and chair of ophthalmology and visual sciences and CEO of the John A. Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah

Zeev Valentine Vardeny, one of the world’s foremost experimental physicists, develops materials, specifically organicmaterials, for use in electronic devices such as transistors and diodes, and optical devices like lasers, photovoltaic cells, and LEDs or light-emitting diodes. Such materials ultimately may serve as the basis for new kinds of computers, televisions, batteries, light bulbs and other products. His current work is developing “plastic” or polymer lasers that could be molded into desired shapes for new display devices and fiber-optic telecommunications.

Dr. Vardeny has served as chair of the University of Utah’s Department of Physics, as director of the University of Utah’s John Dixon Laser Institute, as chairman of the International Conference on “Optical Probes of Conjugated Polymers” and sat on the International Advisory Committee of the 23rd Conference on the Physics of Semiconductors in Berlin.

Robert A. Goldberg is professor of history and director of the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. An outstanding and prolific scholar of American history and an innovative leader, Goldberg has enhanced the visibility of the Tanner Humanities Center in the community and among scholars nationally. His contributions to his field and to the University over a 28-year period have distinguished him as an invaluable faculty member, mentor and scholar.

He is the author of eight books, including: Hooded Empire, which concerns the rise and fall of the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado during the 1920s; Back to the Soil: The Jewish Farmers of Clarion, Utah and their World, which traces a group of 200 Jewish immigrant families from Russia, through the eastern ghettos of America, to a socialist farm colony founded in the Utah desert in 1911; and Grassroots Resistance: Social Movements in Twentieth Century America which considers such groups as the Industrial Workers of the World, the Communist Party, the John Birch Society, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the National Organization for Women. In 1995 Goldberg completed Barry Goldwater, a biography of the Arizona senator and republican presidential candidate and in 2001, published Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America, which analyzes the saturation of popular culture and cyberspace with conspiracy theories.

Recognized for his teaching and academic work, Goldberg has received several awards throughout his career, beginning in 1987 with the Ramona Cannon Award for Teaching Excellence in the Humanities. He has also received: the University of Utah Distinguished Teaching Award in 1991; the University of Utah Presidential Teaching Scholar Award in 1993; and the Honors Program Teaching Award in 1994. He was awarded the University of Utah's Hatch Prize for Excellence in Teaching and the history department's graduate students Virgil Award for Mentoring in 1994, 1997 and 2005. In 2003, he was the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden and most recently, was recognized by the Mormon History Association as one of the premier defenders of religious tolerance at the University of Utah, awarding him the 2007 Thomas L. Kane Award.

Goldberg received his bachelor of arts in 1971 from Arizona State University and his master of arts and doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1972 and 1977, respectively. A faculty member at the University of Utah since 1980, Goldberg has served on the Executive Committee of the Academic Senate, the Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee, the Teaching Committee, the Undergraduate Council and the Committee for the Tanner Lectures on Human Values."

A prolific author, he has added more than 400 papers to the most prestigious publications in the world including Physical Review Letters, perhaps the most prominent journal in physics, in which his writings have appeared 50 times. For eight years he served as regional editor of the Physical Review, a respected American science journal.

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Past Recipients

2007 Recipient
Mary C. Beckerle
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2006 Recipient
David S. Chapman
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