The Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation recently presented Professor Bill Hing of the School of Law with its Heritage Award during a ceremony on San Francisco Bay. The award recognizes a descendant of station detainees who has made an outstanding contribution to society. Hing, who has written about his parents' experience on the island, was cited for his long career in teaching, writing, and volunteering in the immigrant-rights field.

The Paris Geophysical Insitute has awarded Donald Turcotte, professor of geology, the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa in recognition of his contributions to geosciences and his longstanding links with the Institute. Turcotte will be presented with the honorary degree at a ceremony in Paris in November. This is only the second time in the Institute's history that such degrees have been conferred. Turcotte is one of seven to receive the institute's award this year.

Ryosuki Motani, assistant professor in the Department of Geology, has been awarded the Gakujutsu Prize from the Palaeontological Society of Japan. The prize recognizes academic achievements by young paleontologists. Motani studies extinct marine reptiles, especially the dolphin-like icthyosaurs.

Warren Pickett, professor in the Department of Physics, has been awarded a Humboldt Research Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany. The foundation grants about 100 of the awards, worth up to 75,000 Euros (about $90,000) each, per year to enable internationally recognized researchers to carry out joint projects with colleagues in Germany. Pickett will spend 2005-6 on sabbatical leave in Germany where he will work with colleagues at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart, and the Leibnitz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research in Dresden, on magnetism and superconductivity in complex materials.

Marya Welch, a pioneer in establishing women's athletics at UC Davis, was honored in Kansas City, Mo., with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletics Administrators. Welch was one of five women nationally presented with the honor, which recognizes athletic administrators who are advancing women in sport.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers has awarded its 2005 Machine Design Award to Bahram Ravani, professor of mechanical and aeronautical engineering at UC Davis. The award recognizes eminent achievement or distinguished service in the field of machine design, including research, development and teaching. Ravani is also associate director of the Advanced Highway Maintenance and Construction Technology center at UC Davis.

Mark Van Horn, director of the UC Davis Student Farm, recently received the international Agricultural Development Appreciation Award from students in that major. The award honors indivduals who contribute both to students' individual achievement and to the development of excellence in international agricultural development education.

Peter Lindert, an economic historian, recently won two book awards for his Lindert's 2004 book, Growing Public: Social Spending and Economic Growth since the Eighteenth Century. Just this month, the Social Science History Association awarded Lindert the 2005 Allan Sharlin Award, for the best book in social science history published in 2004. Two weeks earlier, the Economic History Association named Lindert co-winner of the Gyorgy Ranki Prize for the best book in European economic history published in 2003-2004.