At Brown

Simmons hosts fund-raiser for child education center

President Simmons will be the host of an April 12 fund-raiser that will benefit the financial aid fund of the Brown/Fox Point Early Childhood Education Center

The event celebrates the center's service to working families for more than three decades. Originally formed as a partnership between Brown and the Fox Point Neighborhood Association, the center became an independent nonprofit organization in 1979. The center still receives substantial support from the University, which provides rent-free use of the building at 150 Hope St. and maintenance support. Some 60 percent of the families affiliated with the center are Brown students or employees.

The center, which is accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, serves 80 children ages 3 to 6 each day. It is committed to serving families from socio-economically, racially, ethnically and linguistically diverse backgrounds in the Providence area with a program that stimulates learning in all areas of a child's development.

The event will be held from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the boardroom of Brown Rudnick Berlack Israels at 121 S. Water St. For more information about the event, telephone 521-5460. For more information about the center, visit its Web site.

Research Note

On Mars, what lies beneath is ice: A recently published report in Nature has revealed water ice around the south pole of Mars. The study, coauthored by Brown geological scientist Jack Mustard and a team of researchers, reveals a permanent cap of ice, which acts as a major reservoir for water on the planet. The data was taken over several weeks in January and February - the late southern summer on Mars - by an imaging spectrometer instrument called OMEGA on the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter.

The report shows several well-defined areas around the pole where varying levels of water ice mix with carbon dioxide ice, which condense at or below the surface of the planet.

Inventorying these atmospheric components, including water and carbon dioxide, provides important evidence toward understanding the geological, climatic evolution of the planet. "These are really exciting results showing a thick stack of water ice deposits beneath a thin frosting of carbon dioxide ice. And this is just the tip of the iceberg for discoveries with data from the OMEGA instrument," said Mustard. - Ricardo Howell

Obituary

Philip Bray, the Hazard professor of physics emeritus, died March 23. He was 78.

Bray, who received a bachelor's degree from Brown in 1948 and his master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard, began teaching at Brown in 1955 as an associate professor of physics. He became a full professor in 1958, and retired in 1990 as Hazard professor of physics.

Bray was a pioneer and expert on nuclear magnetic studies. According to the Providence Journal: "Throughout his career he had taught classes as diverse as physics for premed students and specialized graduate-level courses, and had been a mentor to many of his students, as well as a catalyst to his colleagues.

"According to Nobel laureate and fellow physics Professor Leon Cooper, 'Phil made many contributions to physics and the Brown University physics department . . . his enormous enthusiasm energized us all.'"

Bray was a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Ceramic Society, Sigma Xi, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

He was the recipient of many awards, including the George W. Morey Award from the American Ceramic Association, and the Sir Nevill Mott Award from the Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids for his contributions to glass science. In 1996, a conference on borate crystals and glasses was held in his honor in Abington, England.

He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1969, and the Winston Churchill Overseas Fellowship at Cambridge University in 1985.

Bray is survived by his wife, Marion Cooperman Bray, and three children. The funeral was held March 27 in Providence.