Araceli Lopez-Martens, research director in the SDF team of the Nuclear Physics Pole, is the winner of the 2023 CNRS silver medal. Nuclear physicist Araceli Lopez-Martens is a specialist in the study of the internal cohesion of atomic nuclei. In the 1990s, she took part in the EUROBALL European gamma multi-detector project. This instrument, the most powerful of its generation, makes it possible to study nuclei in very strong rotation to better understand the forces at play in the cohesion of their nucleons. Her investigations, on the extreme deformation of nuclei and then on superheavy nuclei, lead her to the main international nuclear physics centres.
Araceli Lopez-Martens participates in 2020 in the discovery in Dubna (Russia) of a new isotope of Nobelium, 249No. At the same time, she is involved in the construction of AGATA, the next-generation photon detector for nuclear physics, which she coordinates at the French level from 2016 to 2022. Araceli Lopez-Martens is also involved in the developments of the S3 spectrometer at GANIL in Caen, a future center for research on exotic nuclei. Congratulations on this silver medal!