By Paul Cadden-Zimansky

The FHP Student Essay Contest received a record number of entrants in 2019, with submissions from four continents and essay writers ranging from high school students to graduate students. The winning essay “A Changing Dichotomy: The Conception of the ‘Macroscopic’ and ‘Microscopic’ Worlds in the History of Physics” was submitted by Zhixin Wang, a graduate student in applied physics at Yale University. Wang's essay examines scientists' shifting views on the what distinguishes micro and macro over four centuries, from seventeenth century hypotheses of hidden mechanical mechanisms as explanations for visible phenomena to more contemporary distinctions where it is not size, but quantum metrics that are often appealed to. For winning the contest Mr. Wang will receive a cash award of $1,000, plus support for travel to an APS annual meeting to deliver a talk based on his essay. This year's runner-up essay "Isabelle Stone: breaking the glass ceiling with thin films and teaching" was submitted by Melia Bonomo, a Ph.D. candidate in applied physics at Rice University. Bonomo's essay charts the career of the largely unknown Stone who, under the supervision of Albert Michelson, became the first American woman to be awarded a physics doctoral degree in 1897 and went on to be a co-founder of the American Physical Society while making significant contributions to multiple schools of higher education that served women. Ms. Bonomo will receive a $500 cash award for her work. Both essays are posted on the FHP's website at https://www.aps.org/units/fhp/essay/index.cfm