Dennis G. Kovar from the U.S. Department of Energy, was awarded the status of Fellow [1] in the American Physical Society, [2] after they were nominated by their Division of Nuclear Physics in 1996, [3] for his work on direct reactions, which provided precise spectroscopic information of importance for our understanding of single-particle states near doubly-magic 208Pb, and which established the angular-momentum dependence in heavy-ion transfer reactions.