Daily News Briefs

Wyatt Technology, a Santa Barbara, Calif., developer of instruments for absolute macromolecular characterization, was recently named South Santa Barbara County small business of the year, one of the annual Spirit of Small Business awards presented to Los Angeles-area businesses by the Pacific Coast Business Times and the Los Angeles District US Small Business Administration. Wyatt, a 22-year old family-run business, makes multi-angle light-scattering detectors for biotechnology, chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, academic and government customers. . . . Norman M. Kroll, an emeritus professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and a pioneer in the field of quantum electrodynamics, died August 8 in La Jolla, Calif., after a brief illness. He was 82. Kroll was one of UCSD's founding faculty members, arriving in 1962 as a professor of physics after 20 years at Columbia University. He spent 40 years at UCSD, conducting research on electrodynamics, atomic physics, particle physics, free-electron lasers and the design of subatomic particle accelerators. He twice served twice as chair of UCSD's Department of Physics, from 1963 to 1965 and from 1983 to 1988. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the American Physical Society.