Subdivision
| • | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | [X] |
| | 61 | Name: | Dr. George A. Olah | | | Institution: | University of Southern California | | | Year Elected: | 2001 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1927 | | | Death Date: | March 8, 2017 | | | | | | |
George Olah was born (1927) and educated in Budapest, Hungary. He moved to America in 1957. In 1977 he became director of the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute and Distinguished Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Southern California. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, and a Foreign or Honorary Member of other Academies such as the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society of Canada, the Italian National Academy Lincei, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the European Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Indian Academy of Sciences. He received honorary doctoral degrees from several universities, including the University of Durham (England), the University of Munich, the Technical University of Budapest, the University of Crete, the University of Szeged and Veszprem (Hungary), the University of Southern California, Case Western Reserve University, New York State University, and the University of Montpellier (France). His contributions to superacid/carbocation chemistry and electrophilic chemistry of saturated hydrocarbons were singularly recognized with the 1994 undivided Nobel Prize in chemistry. Apart from the Nobel Prize, Olah's work was recognized with many honors and awards. He was the winner of the American Chemical Society's Award for Petroleum Chemistry, Creativity in Synthetic Organic Chemistry, the Roger Adams Medal, the Arthur C. Cope Award, and the Priestley Medal. He had published some 1,250 scientific papers, held 120 patents and authored or co-authored 20 books. George Olah died March 8, 2017, at age 89 in Beverly Hills, California. | |
| 62 | Name: | Dr. Yuri A. Ovchinnikov | | | Year Elected: | 1977 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1934 | | | Death Date: | 2/17/88 | | | | |
| 63 | Name: | Dr. Linus C. Pauling | | | Institution: | Linus Pauling Institute | | | Year Elected: | 1936 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1901 | | | Death Date: | 8/19/94 | | | | |
| 64 | Name: | Lord William G. Penney | | | Year Elected: | 1973 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1909 | | | Death Date: | 3/3/91 | | | | |
| 65 | Name: | Dr. Max F. Perutz | | | Institution: | University of Cambridge | | | Year Elected: | 1968 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1914 | | | Death Date: | February 6, 2002 | | | | |
| 66 | Name: | Dr. George C. Pimentel | | | Institution: | University of California, Berkeley | | | Year Elected: | 1985 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1922 | | | Death Date: | 6/18/89 | | | | |
| 67 | Name: | Dr. Kenneth S. Pitzer | | | Institution: | University of California, Berkeley | | | Year Elected: | 1954 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1914 | | | Death Date: | 12/26/97 | | | | |
| 68 | Name: | Professor Lord Porter | | | Institution: | Imperial College | | | Year Elected: | 1986 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1920 | | | Death Date: | August 31, 2002 | | | | |
| 69 | Name: | Dr. Vladimir Prelog | | | Institution: | Federal Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 1976 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1906 | | | Death Date: | 1/7/98 | | | | |
| 70 | Name: | Dr. C. N. R. Rao | | | Institution: | Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research | | | Year Elected: | 1995 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1934 | | | | | | |
Prof. C.N.R. Rao (born on 30 June 1934, Bangalore, India) is the National Research Professor as well as Honorary President and Linus Pauling Research Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. He is also an Honorary Professor at the Indian Institute of Science. His main research interests are in solid state and materials chemistry. He is an author of over 1400 research papers and 45 books. He received the M.Sc. Degree from Banaras, Ph.D. from Purdue, D.Sc. From Mysore universities and has received honoris causa doctorate degrees from 53 universities including Purdue, Bordeaux, Banaras, Delhi, Mysore, IIT Bombay, IIT Kharagpur, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Novosibirsk, Oxford, Stellenbosch, Grenoble, Uppsala, Wales, Wroclaw, Caen, Khartoum, Calcutta, Sri Venkateswara University and Desikottama from Visva-Bharati.
Prof. Rao is a member of many of the major science academies in the world including the Royal Society, London, the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A., the Russian Academy of Sciences, French Academy of Sciences, Japan Academy as well as the Polish, Czechoslovakian, Serbian, Slovenian, Brazil, Spanish, Korean and African Academies and the American Philosophical Society. He is a Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Foreign Member of Academia Europaea and Foreign Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is on the editorial boards of several leading professional journals and is a distinguished visiting professor of the University of California and Cambridge University.
Among the various medals, honours and awards received by him, mention must be made of the Marlow Medal of the Faraday Society (1967), Bhatnagar Prize (1968), Padma Shri (1974), Centennial Foreign Fellowship of the American Chemical Society (1976), Royal Society of Chemistry (London) Medal (1981), Padma Vibhushan (1985), Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Society of Chemistry, London (1989), Hevrovsky Gold Medal of the Czechoslovak Academy (1989), Blackett Lectureship of the Royal Society (1991), Einstein Gold Medal of UNESCO (1996), Linnett Professorship of the University of Cambridge (1998), Centenary Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, London (2000), the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society, London, for original discovery in physical sciences (2000), Karnataka Ratna (2001) by the Karnataka Government, the Order of Scientific Merit (Grand-Cross) from the President of Brazil (2002), Gauss Professorship of Germany (2003) and the Somiya Award of the International Union of Materials Research (2004). He is the first recipient of the India Science Award by the Government of India and received the Dan David Prize for science in the future dimension for his research in Materials Science in 2005. He was named as Chemical Pioneer by the American Institute of Chemists (2005), Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur by the President of the French Republic (2005) and received the Honorary Fellowship of the Institute of Physics, London (2006) and St. Catherine’s College, Oxford (2007). He received the Nikkei Asia Prize for Science, Technology and Innovation (2008). He was awarded the Royal Medal by the Royal Society (2009) and the August-Wilhelm-von-Hoffmann Medal for his outstanding contributions to chemistry by the German Chemical Society (2010). He received the Ernesto Illy Trieste Science Prize for materials research in 2011.
Prof. Rao is Chairman, Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, immediate past President of The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) and Member of the Atomic Energy Commission of India. He is Founder-President of both the Chemical Research Society of India and of the Materials Research Society of India. Prof. Rao was President of the Indian National Science Academy (1985-86), the Indian Academy of Sciences (1989-91), the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (1985-97). He was the Director of the Indian Institute of Science (1984-94), Chairman of the Science Advisory Council to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi (1985-89) and Chairman, Scientific Advisory Committee to the Union Cabinet (1997-98) and Albert Einstein Research Professor (1995-99). He was elected an International member of the American Philosophical Society in 1995. | |
| 71 | Name: | Dr. Stuart Alan Rice | | | Institution: | University of Chicago | | | Year Elected: | 1986 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1932 | | | | | | |
Stuart A. Rice is the Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus, in the Department of Chemistry and the James Franck Institute of the University of Chicago. He is currently Science Advisor to the Director of Argonne National Laboratory. Born in New York City in 1932, he received a B.S. degree from Brooklyn College in 1952 and A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University in, respectively, 1954 and 1955. His graduate research was carried out with Paul Doty. He was elected to the Society of Fellows, Harvard University, in 1955. After two years as a Junior Fellow he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, where he remained until retirement in 2004. He was selected to be the Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor in 1977. He has carried out theoretical and experimental research in diverse areas of physical chemistry. He and his coworkers have published more than 650 papers dealing with polyelectrolyte solutions, helix-coil transitions in polypeptides and DNA, the transport of mass, energy and charge in liquids, diffusion in crystals, the equilibrium properties of dense fluids, the fluid-solid transition, exciton-exciton interactions in molecular crystals and polymers, exciton and charge carrier band structures of molecular crystals and liquids, structure of the liquid metal-vapor interface, pseudopotential theory of atomic and molecular electronic structure, radiationless transitions, non-statistical behavior in unimolecular reactions, structure and properties of water, quantum and classical deterministic chaos, collision induced mode specific state-to-state vibrational energy transfer, shaped laser field active control of molecular dynamics, structure of Langmuir monolayers, structure, phase transitions and diffusive motion in quasi-one and quasi-two-dimensional colloid assemblies, and miscellaneous other subjects. He has also co-authored four books: Polyelectrolyte Solutions (with Mitsuru Nagasawa); The Statistical Mechanics of Simple Liquids (with Peter Gray); Optical Control of Molecular Dynamics (with Meishan Zhao) and Physical Chemistry (with R. Steven Berry and John Ross). Amongst other public service activities, he has served on numerous advisory boards for Federal Agencies, was a member of the National Science Board from 1980-86 and a member of the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for about twenty years. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, and a Foreign Fellow of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and the Royal Irish Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received four medals from the American Chemical Society (the Award in Pure Chemistry, the Baekland Award, the Debye Award, and the Hildebrand Award), as well as the Hirschfelder Prize in Theoretical Chemistry, the Willis Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics, the Centennial Medal of Harvard University and the National Medal of Science. | |
| 72 | Name: | Dr. John D. Roberts | | | Institution: | California Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 1974 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1918 | | | Death Date: | October 29, 2016 | | | | | | |
An organic chemist of great distinction, John D. Roberts was Institute Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology at the time of his death October 29, 2016, at age 98. He had served on the faculty since 1953. After earning his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1944, he taught at Harvard University (1945-46) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1946-53). The recipient of the American Chemical Society's Pure Science Award (1954) and the Roger Adams Award in organic chemistry (1967), Dr. Roberts was well known for his original discoveries regarding organic compounds, including structure and uses of the Grignard reagent, and his pioneering use of techniques such as nuclear magnetic resonance. He served as editor-in-chief of Organic Syntheses (vol. 41) and had written numerous articles in scientific journals and books including Molecular Orbital Calculations (1961), Modern Organic Chemistry (1967) and (with R. Stewart and M.C. Caserio) Organic Chemistry Methane to Macromolecules (1971). He is the recipient of the American Chemical Society's top prize, the Priestley Medal in 1987, the National Medal of Science in 1990, and in 2013 American Institute of Chemists Gold Medal. | |
| 73 | Name: | Dr. Frank Sherwood Rowland | | | Institution: | University of California, Irvine | | | Year Elected: | 1995 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1927 | | | Death Date: | March 10, 2012 | | | | | | |
Frank Sherwood Rowland was a Nobel laureate and Donald Bren Research Professor of Chemistry and Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine. His research in atmospheric chemistry and chemical kinetics has had an enormous impact on scientific, industrial and general activity on a global scale. Born in Ohio, Dr. Rowland received his B.A. from Ohio Wesleyan University (1948), then earned his M.S. in 1951 and his Ph.D. in 1952, both from the University of Chicago. He held academic posts at Princeton University (1952-56) and at the University of Kansas (1956-64) before becoming a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine, in 1964. At Irvine in the early 1970s he began working with Mario Molina, with whom he would discover the effects of chlorofluorocarbon gases on the ozone layer of the stratosphere. The pair were awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this discovery. Dr. Rowland has won numerous other awards for his work, including the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (1983), the Japan Prize (1989), the Peter Debye Award (1993) and the Roger Revelle Medal (1994). He was elected to the membership of the National Academy of Sciences in 1978, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977, and the Royal Society (as a foreign member) in 2004. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1995. Dr. Rowland died on March 10, 2012, at home in Corona del Mar, California, at the age of 84. | |
| 74 | Name: | Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg | | | Institution: | University of California, Berkeley | | | Year Elected: | 1952 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1912 | | | Death Date: | 2/25/99 | | | | |
| 75 | Name: | Dr. Howard E. Simmons | | | Institution: | DuPont | | | Year Elected: | 1994 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1929 | | | Death Date: | 4/26/97 | | | | |
| 76 | Name: | Dr. Charles P. Smyth | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 1932 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1895 | | | Death Date: | 3/18/90 | | | | |
| 77 | Name: | Dr. Gilbert Stork | | | Institution: | Columbia University | | | Year Elected: | 1995 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1921 | | | Death Date: | October 21, 2017 | | | | | | |
Gilbert Stork received a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin in 1945. He was an assistant professor at Harvard University until 1953, when he moved to Columbia University for a career spanning four decades. He became Eugene Higgins Professor of Chemistry Emeritus in 1992, but continued to work up to his death on October 21, 2017, at age 95. Gilbert Stork was a world leader in the art and science of synthetic organic chemistry. Not only had he achieved trail-blazing syntheses of complex natural products of biochemical interest, such as cantharidin, lupeol, prostaglandins, steroids, reserpine and calictriol, but at the same time, he had developed many synthetic methodologies of wide applicability. Of special note is the inspiration and training he provided in his laboratory for students and postdoctoral fellows who went on to important academic and industrial positions worldwide. Dr. Stork received many honors for his work, including the American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry (1957), Baekeland Medal (1961), Edward Curtis Franklin Memorial Award from Stanford (1966), American Chemical Society Award in Synthetic Organic Chemistry (1967), Roussel Prize in Steroid Chemistry (1978), Nichols Medal (1980), Arthur C. Cope Award (1980), National Medal of Science (1982), Edgar Fahs Smith Award (1982), Willard Gibbs Medal (1982), Linus Pauling Award (1983), Roger Adams Award in Organic Chemistry from the American Chemical Society (1991), the Welch Prize in Chemistry (1993), the Wolf Prize (1996), the Philadelphia Organic Chemists' Club Award (1998), the First Barton gold medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2002), the Ryoji Noyori Prize (2004) and the Herbert Brown Award for Creative Research in Synthetic Methods (2005). He wss an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Académie des Sciences (France), the Royal Society of Chemistry, (U.K.), and the Royal Society (U.K.). He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1995. | |
| 78 | Name: | Dr. JoAnne Stubbe | | | Institution: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1946 | | | | | | |
JoAnne Stubbe is one of the world's leading enzymologists. Her specific interest is in how reactive chemical intermediates such as free radicals are exploited and controlled in biochemical processes to effect difficult chemical transformations. With experiments of sparkling originality, she showed that a key enzyme, ribonucleotide reductase, that is involved in the synthesis of deoxynucleotides, initiates its chemistry through an unusual diferrictyrosyl radical that abstracts a key hydrogen from the sugar nucleus. Surprisingly, an important chemotherapeutic agent, bleomycin, was shown by Dr. Stubbe to owe its antitumor activity to a free radical mechanism that neatly explains its chemical and sequence specificity. Currently Novartis Professor of Chemistry and Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Stubbe has previously held faculty positions at Williams College (1972-77), Yale University Medical School (1977-80) and the University of Wisconsin (1980-87). She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1971). The recipient of honors including the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry (1986), the Alfred Bader Award in Bioorganic & Bioinorganic Chemistry (1997), the National Medal of Science (2009), and the Franklin Institute's Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science (2009). Dr. Stubbe was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1991 and the National Academy of Sciences in 1992. | |
| 79 | Name: | Dr. Henry Taube | | | Institution: | Stanford University | | | Year Elected: | 1981 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1915 | | | Death Date: | November 16, 2005 | | | | |
| 80 | Name: | Sir John Meurig Thomas | | | Institution: | The Royal Institution of Great Britain & University of Cambridge | | | Year Elected: | 1993 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1932 | | | Death Date: | November 13, 2020 | | | | | | |
Professor Sir John Meurig Thomas was born in December 1932 in South Wales. The son of a coalminer, Sir John's interest in science was greatly aroused as a teenager when his physics mistress talked about the life and work of Michael Faraday, who has remained one of his scientific heroes. He graduated with a Bachelor's degree from the University of Wales, Swansea, and completed his Ph.D. at the University of London. His first academic appointment (1958) was at the University of Wales, Bangor, where inter alia he demonstrated the profound influence that dislocations and other structural imperfections exert upon the chemical, electronic and surface properties of solids. He became Professor and Head of Chemistry at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth in 1969, where he broadened his interests in solid-state, surface and materials chemistry and pioneered the application of electron microscopy in chemistry. In 1978 he became Head of the Department of Physical Chemistry, University of Cambridge, where his development of new techniques in solid-state and materials science and his design and synthesis of new catalysts progressed greatly. From 1986-91 he was Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London, where he occupied the chair that was created for Michael Faraday. He was also Director of the Davy Faraday Research Laboratory. At Cambridge he extended his earlier electron microscopic and surface studies of mineral and intercalates to encompass the synthesis and structural determination of zeolitic materials by a combination of solid-state NMR, neutron scattering and real-space imaging. At London he added synchrotron radiaton to his armoury and devised techniques which combine X-ray spectroscopy and high-resolution X-ray diffraction to determine the atomic structure of active sites of solid catalysts under operating conditions. He has also designed new microporous and mesoporous catalysts, onto the inner surfaces of which active centres (for isomerizations, epoxidation, chiral hygrogenations and chiral amination) were grafted from organo-metallic precursors. He has also devised molecular sieve catalysts that convert n-alkanes to n-alkanol, cyclohexane or cyclohexene to adipic acid, n-hexane to adipic acid and cyclohexanone to its oxime and caprolactam, all in air under solvent-free conditions. One of his inventions, the single-step, solvent-free catalytic synthesis of ethyl acetate, is the basis of a 220,000 ton p.a. plant in the U.K., the largest of its kind in the world. One of his most significant recent catalytic innovations is the boosting of the enamtioselectivity of asymmetric organometallic catalysts by constraining them within mesoporous supports. This has been multiply patented (2003) by German industry as a means of producing enantiomerically enriched hydroxycarboxylic esters. He is the author of over 950 research papers and twenty patents, of two definitive university texts on heterogeneous catalysis (1967 and 1997), and of Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place (1991; Japanese translation, 1994; Italian translation, 2006), and co-editor of many other monographs. His awards include the Davy Medal and the Bakerian and Rutherford Lectureships of the Royal Society, the Faraday Medal, Longstaff Medal and four others of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Messel Gold Medal of the Society of Chemical Industry, the Semenov Centenary Medal and the Kapitza Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Science, the Willard Gibbs Gold Medal of the American Chemical Society, the Royal Medal (Queen's Medal), and the first recipient of the Award for Creative Research in Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Catalysis, also of the American Chemical Society. In 1995 the European Federation of Catalyst Societies (EFCATS), representing 24 national societies, chose him to give the first series of François Gault Lectures at 12 centers in 6 European countries. An FRS since 1977, in 1999 he was elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering for work that "has profoundly added to the science-base of heterogeneous catalysis leading to the commercial exploitation of zeolites through engineering processes". He was a Foreign Member or Hon. Foreign Fellow of fifteen other national and international academies and holds numerous honorary doctorates from Australian, British, Canadian, Chinese, Dutch, Egyptian, French, Italian, Spanish and U.S. universities. In 2000 The Electron Microscopy and Microanalysis Society of America held a symposium in his honour at their annual convention in Philadelphia, In September 2002 an International Symposium of Catalysis was held in London by the Royal Society of Chemistry to celebrate his 70th birthday. Stanford University awarded him the Linus Pauling gold medal in 2003 for his contributions to the advancement of science, and the Italian Chemical Society presented him with its Guilio Natta Gold Medal for meritorious work in catalysis. In 2007 the International Precious Metal Institute awarded him its Distinguished Achievement Award for "pioneering contributions to the field of heterogeneous catalysis using precious metals over a long, distinguished career." In 2010, he was awarded three lectureships: the Bragg Prize lecturship of the British Crystallographic Association, the Sven Beggren Prize lectureship of the Royal Lund Physiographic Academy, and the Ertl Prize lectureship of the Max Planck Gessellschaft. One of the world's most highly cited chemists, Sir John was founding co-editor-in-chief of Catalysis Letters (1987), Topics in Catalysis (1992), and Current Opinion in Solid-State and Materials Science (1996). He has done much to popularize science amoung young people and adult lay audiences, giving numerous lecture-demonstrations, radio, television, and national Portrait Gallery talks: his Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on crystals were broadcast on BBC national TV in 1987. He served (1982-85) as a science advisor in the U.K. Government Cabinet Office Committee, as Chairman of CHEMRAWN (chemical research applied to world needs), and Trustee of the Science Museum and of the Natural History Museum, London. In 1991 he was knighted for his services to chemistry and the popularization of science. In recognition of his contributions to geochemistry, a new mineral, meurigite, was name after him in 1995. John Meurig Thomas was Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the Davy Faraday Research Laboratory, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London, and Honorary Professor at the Department of Materials Science, University of Cambridge. From 1993-2002 he was Master of Peterhouse, the oldest college in the University of Cambridge. He is Vice President of the Cambridge University Musical Society. Sir John died on November 13, 2020, at age 87. | |
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