| Back Issues |
|
|
|
|
ACS Members can sign up to receive C&EN e-mail newsletter.  |
|
|
 Join ACS |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Following is the third set of vignettes of recipients of awards administered by the American Chemical Society for 2003. C&EN will publish the vignettes of the remaining recipients in successive January and February issues. An article on Edwin J. Vandenberg, 2003 Priestley Medalist, is scheduled to appear in the March 24 issue of C&EN. Most of the award recipients will be honored at an awards ceremony, which will be held on Tuesday, March 25, in conjunction with the 225th ACS national meeting in New Orleans. However, the Arthur C. Cope Scholar awardees will be honored at the 226th ACS national meeting in New York City, Sept. 7–11.
Francis P. Garvan–John M. Olin Medal Sponsored by the Francis P. Garvan-John M. Olin Medal Endowment
Greenblatt, 61, arrived in the U.S. from Hungary in 1957, in the aftermath of the 1956 revolution against Stalinism. "From early on I wanted to be a doctor, but it did not work out," she said. "My first love was physics, but I always liked chemistry. Instead of going to med school, I went to graduate school. I went to [Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn] in 1962; it was another [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] on the East Coast--the best polymer school in the country. I had a very intense graduate experience in this very good chemistry department." Greenblatt earned a B.S. in chemistry with honors from Brooklyn College in 1962 and a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1967. She chose solid-state chemistry by accident. "I started out as a teaching assistant, got acquainted with the more senior people. Someone said, 'Why don't you come into [Ephraim] Banks's lab and see how you like it?' There were very few practitioners of solid-state chemistry at the time; more in Europe than in America," she recalls. "But I liked it partly because it involved growing crystals, and I liked crystals. When Banks left on a sabbatical, I moved into the crystallography lab, and I really loved crystallography." Greenblatt joined Rutgers University in 1974, a time when relatively few chemistry departments had a solid-state program, according to Rutgers colleague Ronald Levy. "Her job was to build one at Rutgers, although funds were very limited for such endeavors--high-Tc superconductors were more than a decade away--and few of her colleagues had any interest in this strange new discipline. From this inauspicious beginning, she has built a solid-state chemistry program that is recognized around the world for its excellence and diversity." Greenblatt's research career has been prolific, with more than 350 publications in materials chemistry. Her research focus is on synthesizing new materials that have novel properties, particularly low-dimensional materials with electronic correlations--metal-to-insulator transitions, charge-density-waves (CDW), superconductivity, and colossal magnetoresistance (CMR). Another area of her research interest is in ionically conducting solids for potential applications as sensor, battery, and fuel-cell materials. Greenblatt considers mentoring students her most significant scientific achievement. "Close to two dozen students (four are women) have gotten their Ph.D.s with me, and a similar number of postdocs (five of those women) trained with me. It's been very satisfying to see them grow into their own careers, publishing and doing really great science," she says. She has also informally organized meetings of young women scientists and graduate students at conferences, such as Gordon Conferences, to discuss issues facing women in science and in academic careers. "Martha is a pioneer in more ways than one," said Francis J. DiSalvo, director of the Cornell Center for Materials Research, who worked with Greenblatt during her sabbatical year at Bell Labs in 1980. "Before many women were studying chemistry, she decided to obtain her Ph.D. in solid-state chemistry, then a very small field," he notes. "For more than a decade, she was the only female professor in the field. Now there are a few more, but Martha blazed the way." The award address will be presented before the Division of Inorganic Chemistry.--CORINNE A. MARASCO ACS Award for Creative Research in Homogeneous or Heterogeneous Catalysis Sponsored by Shell Oil Foundation
But when you're credited with all of those things--as Robert H. Grubbs is--then you're held in the highest esteem by leading scientists of the day. Grubbs, a professor of chemistry at California Institute of Technology, is well known for his numerous contributions to homogeneous catalytic chemistry. For example, in the early 1980s, his research group isolated and characterized the first metallacyclobutane complex capable of catalyzing olefin metathesis reactions--a family of reactions in which the moieties connected to a carbon-carbon double bond are rearranged. The work led to mechanistic understanding of the role of metal-carbene complexes and to the discovery of a new class of polymerization catalysts. More recently, Grubbs and coworkers discovered a class of ruthenium-alkylidene olefin-metathesis catalysts that is remarkably tolerant of polar functional groups and even works efficiently in proton-bearing solvents. The discovery opened new synthesis routes for preparing functionalized polymers in aqueous solutions. Those findings were followed by advances in ring-closing metathesis chemistry. Specifically, the Caltech group showed that the Grubbs ruthenium catalysts could be used efficiently and selectively for constructing C5C bonds--even with sterically hindered and highly functionalized chemical species. The breakthroughs made big news in the synthesis world. As Northwestern University chemistry professor Tobin J. Marks puts it, "the rapid and widespread acceptance of the Grubbs reagent by researchers around the world for preparing everything from large natural products of pharmaceutical importance to catenanes to peptides is nothing less than phenomenal." And just as enthusiastically, K. Barry Sharpless, a Chemistry Nobel Laureate and professor at Scripps Research Institute, remarks that "nothing advances chemistry more than the discovery of useful and completely unprecedented reactivity." He adds that as a result of the spectacular metathesis discoveries made by the Grubbs group, "we are now living through one of those rare moments in chemistry." Grubbs, 60, earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in chemistry with Merle A. Battiste, both at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He then obtained a Ph.D. in chemistry at Columbia University in 1968 working with Ronald Breslow. After completing a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship, he joined the chemistry faculty at Michigan State University, East Lansing, in 1969, as an assistant professor. In 1978, he accepted the position of chemistry professor at Caltech and was named Victor & Elizabeth Atkins Professor of Chemistry there in 1990. Grubbs has written more than 400 scientific research papers and is an author of some 40 patents. Among his numerous awards and distinctions, Grubbs has been honored as an Alfred P. Sloan fellow and as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow. In addition to winning the Arthur C. Cope Award, Grubbs has received several ACS national awards, including those for organometallic chemistry, polymer chemistry, and creative research in synthetic methods. The award address will be presented before the Division of Inorganic Chemistry.--MITCH JACOBY ACS Award in Chromatography Sponsored by Supelco Inc.
Hancock got his start in protein chemistry as a postdoc with Roy Vagelos at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis. Hancock's educational background was actually as a biochemist and synthetic organic chemist. He received a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1970 from the University of Adelaide, in Australia. Vagelos was studying acyl carrier protein in the days before recombinant DNA technology made producing proteins easier. "You had to sequence [the protein] the hard way, and then you had to synthesize it the hard way," Hancock says. "I think I got the postdoc because he was looking for an organic chemist to do the chemical synthesis. Solid-phase synthesis got me into protein chemistry, which got me into separations, because it was a complex synthesis and things weren't too pure." Hancock's interest in proteins continued after he returned down under as a faculty member in the department of chemistry, biochemistry, and biophysics at Massey University, in New Zealand. In 1975, he published the first reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) separation of peptides and proteins. He found that adding phosphoric acid to the organic solvent allowed him to chromatograph peptides reproducibly. "The first thing we tried was peptide separation, followed by peptide mapping, and then we got more ambitious and tried small proteins such as insulin," Hancock says. "With the appropriate ion-pairing reagent, the appropriate ionic strength, and organic solvent, it worked very nicely." Around the same time, the biotechnology industry was just getting started. The Food & Drug Administration didn't really know how to regulate the products made by recombinant DNA technology. "I was invited to present some work on HPLC and advise FDA on approaches," Hancock says. He spent a sabbatical at FDA as a visiting scientist. His stint at FDA led to him moving to Genentech in 1985, where he helped establish the analytical chemistry department. In 1994, Hancock made the switch to instrument manufacturers, working first for Hewlett-Packard Laboratories (now Agilent Technologies) as a principal scientist and then for ThermoFinnigan as vice president and general manager of proteomics. Barry L. Karger, director of the Barnett Institute, says, "Through Hancock's work, HPLC has become the required tool, particularly in peptide mapping, in the analysis of protein therapeutics." In addition, Hancock's "ability to straddle the biotechnology and separation science communities has made his work very significant. He not only advanced the state of the art of HPLC but also aided in the wide adoption of this technology," Karger says. Hancock's interest in proteomics has led him back to academia. "I don't want to talk about disease markers or diagnostics," he says. "I think you're putting on a commercial focus before you know what you're doing. Let's do the hard work and understand the biology." At the Barnett Institute, he will be focusing on cancer proteomics. Hancock has served on numerous editorial boards of journals and magazines. He was an associate editor of the ACS journal Analytical Chemistry from 1992 to 2001 and is currently editor-in-chief of the Journal of Proteome Research, another ACS journal. The award address will be presented before the Division of Analytical Chemistry.--CELIA HENRY ACS Award for Team Innovation Sponsored by ACS Corporation Associates A group of scientists working at DuPont is being recognized for contributions to the discovery of indoxacarb, which is a major new insecticide first marketed in 2000 for use on cotton, vegetables, and fruit. Indoxacarb is unusual because it has relatively low toxicity to mammals, birds, fish, and beneficial insects, yet is lethal to major lepidopteran and other insect pests. It acts by blocking the sodium channels of the insects' nervous system. It has the effectiveness of well-established insecticides and the safety advantages of biological control agents. According to William E. Barnette, research manager at DuPont Crop Protection Products, indoxacarb is the company's first major insecticide product in more than 30 years. The discovery and development of indoxacarb took about a decade of painstaking research during which a series of related compounds were investigated for their lethality to insects, their persistence, and their toxicity to nontarget organisms. The insecticidal activity of pyrazoline sodium channel blockers was discovered in the early 1970s, but these compounds have major problems because they can be environmentally persistent, have the potential to bioaccumulate, and are toxic to birds, fish, and beneficial insects. Through a series of syntheses starting with pyrazolines, George P. Lahm, Charles R. Harrison, Rafael Shapiro, and Stephen F. McCann came up with oxadiazines that demonstrated superior insecticidal activity against lepidoptera. Using metabolism preparations, Keith D. Wing found that a modification to the oxadiazines resulted in compounds, including indoxacarb, with enhanced selective toxicity to insects and with increased safety to nontarget organisms. The team utilized metabolism and toxicology information hand in hand with biological efficacy to guide the direction of the synthesis program. Shapiro then discovered a commercially feasible four-step route for the manufacture of indoxacarb. Although each team member made individual contributions, it was only the close working relationship of these scientists with each other and with a larger DuPont agricultural chemistry team that led to the success of the final project. Because indoxacarb poses no significant threat to nontarget organisms, "it is an attractive solution to the risks posed to aquatic and avian species by some older types of insecticides," says Mark E. Thompson, manager of lead discovery at DuPont Crop Protection Products. Lahm, 48, a research fellow at DuPont, earned a B.S. in chemistry from the State University of New York, Oswego, in 1976 and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Indiana University in 1980. He holds more than 25 patents in insecticide research. Harrison, 46, is a technical manager at DuPont Textiles & Interiors. He earned both a B.A. in psychology in 1979 and a B.S. in chemistry in 1980 from the University of Central Florida. In 1984, he received a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has been awarded nine U.S. patents and has authored at least 15 articles. The inventor of oxadiazines, McCann, 45, is a research associate in the chemical discovery section at DuPont Crop Protection Products. He earned both a B.S. in chemistry in 1979 and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1987 from the University of Califor-nia, Irvine. After obtaining his degree, he did two years of postdoctoral work at Indiana University. He has 13 patents, either issued or pending, and 11 articles to his credit. Shapiro, 48, is currently a research fellow at Dupont Crop Protection Products. Shapiro earned a B.A. in chemistry from Rice University in 1974 and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1978. Before taking a position at DuPont, he was a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has more than 20 patents. Wing, 48, is a senior research associate at DuPont Crop Protection Products. He received a B.A. in biology from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1976 and a Ph.D. in entomology from the University of California, Riverside, in 1981. Before taking a position at DuPont, he did postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley, and worked for eight years as a senior insect physiologist at Rohm and Haas. There, he received the corporate Otto Haas Award for Scientists & Engineers. He holds 11 patents and has authored or coauthored 22 articles. The award address will be presented before the Division of Agrochemicals.--BETTE HILEMAN
ACS Award for Computers in Chemical & Pharmaceutical Research Sponsored by Accelrys Inc.
Houk is a chemistry professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. The mainstay of his more than three decades of research has been understanding the mechanisms and stereoselectivities of organic and organometallic reactions using computational techniques, often, he says, "in collaboration with experimentalists who need help solving a problem or ones who taunt us with demands for a prediction." In recent years, research in Houk's lab has moved ever deeper into the field of biological catalysis. "There are few areas of organic chemistry that have not been influenced by Ken Houk's computational investigations into reaction mechanisms," says UCLA colleague J. Fraser Stoddart. "He has combined an unparalleled mastery of the most advanced methods of quantum chemistry with a vigorous experimental program--a blend at which few chemists have been successful." Stoddart ticks off some of Houk's contributions: theoretical models of reactivity, regioselectivity, and stereoselectivity in cycloadditions; the origins of negative activation energies and entropy control of carbene cycloadditions; the geometries of transition states of pericyclic reactions; the phenomenon and theoretical explanation of "torquoselectivity"; the origins of stereoselectivity and practical methods of computational modeling of a wide variety of synthetically important reactions; gating in host-guest complexes; "slippage" in the self-assembly of rotaxanes from their ring and dumbbell components; and mechanisms of transition-state stabilization by catalytic antibodies. Houk says that research in his group has, over the past decade, turned toward computational investigations at the interfaces of chemistry and biology and materials science. He is the principal investigator for UCLA's National Institutes of Health Chemistry-Biology Interface Training Grant, and he has collaborated with various members of the California NanoSystems Institute, which is just getting off the ground. Houk points to work on catalytic antibodies that was spurred by a question from Richard Lerner, director of Scripps Research Institute and one of the discoverers of catalytic antibodies. "Richard wanted us to predict the preferred regiochemistry of a reaction to see if they could produce an antibody that would overcome it. Looking at how a protein interacts with the transition state, how it alters the transition state, fit in naturally with my longtime interests." The group explored the catalytic properties of antibodies by a combination of quantum mechanics, molecular mechanics, and molecular dynamics methods, Houk says. UCLA as an institution is pursuing several lines of research into organic materials, and "I'm caught up in that, too," Houk says. "There are a lot of similarities with our work on biological questions--how potential devices and molecular machines work is complex and hard to compute accurately. One of the frontiers of computational chemistry is nanoscience." Houk was born in Nashville in 1943. He received an A.B. (1964), an M.S. (1966), and a Ph.D. (1968) at Harvard University. He received an ACS Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award in 1988, the ACS James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry in 1991, and the Schrödinger Medal of the World Association of Theoretically Oriented Chemists in 1998. From 1988 to 1990, Houk was director of the National Science Foundation's Chemistry Division. The award address will be presented before the Division of Computers in Chemistry.--RUDY BAUM ACS Award for Encouraging Women into Careers in the Chemical Sciences Sponsored by the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation
As editor-in-chief of Chemical & Engineering News, Jacobs, 56, has exerted her influence on the chemical world both through her editorial vision that guides the magazine and through her thought-provoking weekly editorials. Jacobs has a long-standing interest in issues dealing with gender equity in science. In 1969, she joined C&EN right out of graduate school and was the only woman reporter on the magazine's staff. "I very quickly recognized there was a problem," she says. "C&EN publishes the results of the ACS Salary Survey every year, and I looked at the data and it was obvious that there was a very large salary gap between men and women chemists, particularly at the starting level." She began digging into the issue, and in October 1970, her work resulted in C&EN's first major story looking at the challenges that women chemists face in advancing. "From that moment on, I became very interested in encouraging young women into chemistry careers," she says. "When I was in college," she recalls, "I didn't have any women chemists who were role models. I believed that the disparity between the achievement of men and women chemists was a pipeline issue. I thought that, if you waited long enough and enough women got their bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. degrees, eventually, they would populate the various occupational slots in proportion to their holding degrees." But it wasn't so. "Now I realize that it's infinitely more complex and infinitely harder to explain." Jacobs left C&EN in 1972 for stints at the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases; the National Institute of Standards & Technology; and the Smithsonian Institution, where she started as the chief science writer and became director of the Office of Public Affairs. She returned to C&EN in 1993 as managing editor and became editor-in-chief in 1995. "Once I came back, my interest in gender equality in science was rekindled in a major way because there were still so many disparities," she says. According to Whitesides, Jacobs "has been particularly effective in keeping this subject in front of management in industry; universities are beginning to change, but have been slower." Jacobs' position at C&EN and her reputation for giving a great talk have made her a popular speaker at universities and companies. At these presentations, she talks on a variety of issues: the challenges of editing C&EN, attracting the best and the brightest to science, and women's issues. She also always takes these opportunities to go out of her way to speak with young women chemists and to encourage them. "In doing so, in her own wonderfully unique way, she has surely helped to encourage more young women scientists into our field," says Jacqueline K. Barton, chemistry professor at California Institute of Technology. Jacobs believes that mentoring is extremely important. She says that she has had many mentors and role models throughout her career, among them her husband Joe, an artist, to whom she has been married for more than 30 years. "I think many successful people have a partner who is both a supporter and a teacher, and it is certainly true in my case." Although "there has been huge progress in the 33 years since I first wrote about women's issues, there is still a long way to go," Jacobs says. "My greatest pleasure would be that C&EN no longer has to publish 'scorecards' for women in academe and women in industry because the problems have been solved." Jacobs received a B.S. in chemistry at George Washington University in 1968 and completed a year of graduate school in organic chemistry at the University of Maryland. Among her other honors are the New York Academy of Sciences Women's History Month Award (2002), the Ruth Evelyn Sanders Distinguished Lectureship of Texas Christian University (2001), and more than three dozen writing awards. The award address will be presented before the Division of Chemical Education.--LINDA RABER E. Bright Wilson Award in Spectroscopy Sponsored by Rohm and Haas
Jacox, now scientist emeritus at the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, Md., is recognized for her outstanding contributions to fundamental spectroscopy of chemical reaction intermediates. She pioneered in matrix isolation spectroscopy--a technique that involves snaring unstable molecules in an inert chemical framework so they can be studied--working from theory through novel experimental design to compilations of data on more than 3,400 neutral and ionic transient small molecules. "Her studies are always the epitome of thorough, careful research, applying all of the spectroscopic tools at her disposal to answer interesting questions about transient intermediates," says Bruce S. Ault, a chemistry professor with the University of Cincinnati. "Her studies of molecular ions have been particularly productive in the past two decades, when for many years conventional wisdom held that ions could not be trapped in cryogenic solids." In 1958, when she began using IR to study transient small molecules, there was no information available on these species. She joined the Mellon Institute, working with Dolphus Milligan, who had built an experimental setup to trap free radicals in rare gases under cryogenic conditions and planned to test his ideas on conditions necessary for stabilizing these species. Milligan had been an early graduate student of George C. Pimentel's. Together, Jacox and Milligan worked at trapping and analyzing free radicals; the first polyatomic radical they "saw" was HO2 in solid argon. Identification of HNC followed soon after, and the pair was on a roll. They found that they could stabilize charged species as well, the first of which was C22. And from anions, they moved to cations. "We worked hard," Jacox recalls, "sometimes doing as many as three experiments in a day. But it was an exciting time. "The thrill of discovery is addictive," Jacox says, and she's at it still. She has two papers in internal review at NIST on ions derived from formic acid. Jacox has advice for women in the sciences: "Communication is key. Present your results at meetings, and get them in print. Networking is fine, but publishing is critical." She also recommends keeping "an eye on the big picture--to get ideas, consider future directions, and provide a context for your work." Jacox, 73, earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry at Utica College of Syracuse University in 1951 and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Cornell University in 1956. After a postdoc at the University of North Carolina, she became a research fellow at Mellon Institute. In 1962, Jacox moved to the National Bureau of Standards (later NIST) as a research chemist, and she served as chief of the photochemistry section and of the environmental chemical processes section before becoming a NIST fellow in 1986. She has been a scientist emeritus since 1996. She is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of ACS, Sigma Xi, and the Inter-American Photochemical Society. Jacox was honored with a special issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry (April 27, 2000). Among her awards are the Hillebrand Prize of the Chemical Society of Washington (1990) and the Ellis R. Lippincott Award in Vibrational Spectroscopy (1989). The award address will be presented before the Division of Physical Chemistry.--ROBIN GIROUX ACS Award in Organometallic Chemistry Sponsored by Dow Chemical Co. Foundation
Jones, 49, the Charles F. Houghton Professor of Chemistry at the University of Rochester, is "the premier mechanistic organometallic chemist of his generation," opines chemistry professor Maurice S. Brookhart of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Jones's work has focused on the use of transition-metal organometallic compounds to cleave strong bonds such as C–H, C–C, C–S, and C–F bonds. When Jones began exploring this topic in 1980, activating C–H bonds under mild conditions was thought to be impossible because of unfavorable thermodynamics and kinetics. But his group and those of Robert G. Bergman and William A. G. Graham demonstrated that a variety of metal complexes could accomplish this. Jones's initial analysis of how a rhodium complex effects C–H activation "ranks as the definitive work on the subject," says chemistry professor Richard Eisenberg at the University of Rochester. And "his development of an experimentally based potential energy surface to map out the energetics of C–H bond activation was brilliantly executed through elegant design, careful experimentation, and probing analysis." What's more, Eisenberg continues, "Bill keeps adding to our knowledge of this fundamentally important problem." In 2001, for example, Jones published some of the first kinetic evidence for the formation of sigma-alkane complexes during the activation of aliphatic C–H bonds by a rhodium complex. This work, according to Eisenberg, "makes possible a meaningful analysis of competitive C–H activation reactions involving a wealth of alkane substrates having primary and secondary C–H bonds." Brookhart, for one, thinks this paper is destined to be a widely quoted classic enshrined in textbooks. Jones's interest in making and breaking bonds in a controlled manner has led him to the parallel problems of C–S, C–C, and C–F bond activation. The first of these is relevant to hydrodesulfurization (HDS), which is used to reduce the sulfur content of fuels. In 2000, Jones showed that under relatively mild conditions, a dinuclear nickel hydride desulfurizes dibenzothiophene, "easily the most intransigent of gasoline components to HDS," Eisenberg points out. Previous work by others had suggested that highly active reagents were needed to accomplish this. "Jones's recent work on C–C bond activation is another example of his imaginative and penetrating approach to an important problem," writes chemistry professor Charles P. Casey of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. For example, Jones discovered a metal complex that can insert into the C–C bond of biphenylene. Further work has led him to examples of three catalytic reactions of C–C bonds: cleavage, hydrogenolysis, and carbonylation. Jones and coworkers also have discovered metal complexes that can cleave aryl-cyanide and aryl-acetylide bonds. In addition, Jones found a new system for aryl C–F bond activation, and his investigations of it have shed light on the mechanism. "In ongoing extensions of this work to aliphatic and vinylic C–F bonds," Eisenberg notes, "he has found other mechanisms to be operative and is scoping out the landscape of the potential surface for C–F bond activation as he has beautifully done for C–H activation." Jones received a B.S. in chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and a Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology in 1979. After a one-year stint as a National Science Foundation postdoc in Casey's lab, he joined the faculty of the University of Rochester, where he is currently chairman of the chemistry department. Although Jones has received a number of awards and honors, this is his first ACS award. The award address will be presented before the Division of Inorganic Chemistry.--RON DAGANI Charles Lathrop Parsons Award
Lerman, distinguished professor of science and public policy and head of the Institute for Science Education & Science Communication at Columbia College, Chicago, is "honored" and "proud" to be selected by the ACS Board to receive this award. An avid human rights activist, Lerman considers her commitment to public service a responsibility. "I feel very strongly that every human being that is on planet Earth has the responsibility to make it a better place for the future," she explains. Lerman has chaired the ACS Subcommittee on Scientific Freedom & Human Rights for more than 15 years. She has worked diligently to free dissident scientists in China, Belarus, and Russia. She feels rewarded when she sees people at ACS meetings whom she once had to meet in dark alleys in the former Soviet Union. "Today, they appear in suits. They are employed chemists here in the U.S. This is my pleasure," she confides. Lerman also believes "very strongly that equal access to science education is a human right that belongs to all." As a result, she developed methods to make chemistry more accessible to students by teaching them through art, music, dance, and drama. During the summer, she also runs a monthlong environmental chemistry workshop for teachers. Her plans for the near future include producing videos and DVDs demonstrating how to teach science through dance or drama, increasing communi-cations between scientists in the Middle East in order to ease tensions, and continuing to work on behalf of scientists throughout the world who have had their human rights abused. Born in Israel in 1937, Lerman attended the Technion--Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, where she earned both a B.S. and an M.S. in chemistry. After receiving a Ph.D. in chemistry at Weizmann Institute of Science, in Rehovot, Israel, Lerman came to the U.S. in 1969 as a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University. She also conducted research at Northwestern University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich (ETH) prior to joining Columbia College in 1977 as the director of the science program. Lerman's past recognitions include the 1998 ACS Award for Encouraging Disadvantaged Students into Careers in the Chemical Sciences; the 1999 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics & Engineering Mentoring; the American Institute of Chemists 2000 Joseph Hyman Ethics Award; and the ACS Northeastern Section's 2002 James Flack Norris Award for Excellence in Teaching Chemistry. She was also named a Kilby Award Laureate in 1998. Lerman says that receiving the Parsons Award means the most to her since it honors her service to society and, unlike her other awards, came as a complete surprise to her. She also considers her selection for the award a memorial to her late mentor at Cornell, Franklin A. Long. In 1985, Long received the Parsons Award and had hoped that Lerman would also become a recipient. The award address will be presented at the ACS Board of Directors dinner on March 22 in New Orleans.--RACHEL PEPLING Ernest Guenther Award in the Chemistry of Natural Products Sponsored by Givaudan
Ley, 57, is professor of organic chemistry and Novartis Research Fellow in the department of chemistry at the University of Cambridge. Born in the U.K., Ley studied chemistry and received a B.S. from England's Loughborough University in 1969. He received a Ph.D. from the same university in 1972. That was followed by a two-year postdoc at Ohio State University. A further postdoc under Sir Derek H. R. Barton brought him to Imperial College, part of the University of London, where he joined the staff as a lecturer in 1975 and was made a full professor in 1983. He served as head of the chemistry department from 1989 to 1992, only leaving to join the faculty at Cambridge as BP (1702) Professor of Organic Chemistry and head of the organic chemistry department. His colleagues cite three areas in which Ley has made significant contributions to natural product chemistry. One area is structure determination, where among other achievements, his group determined the correct absolute configuration of the clerodin diterpenes--an accomplishment that prompted reassignment of some 300 structures that had appeared in the literature previously. He also led research, using X-ray crystallography, to determine the structure of the potent insect antifeedant azadirachtin. Another area is synthesis, including molecules from a variety of areas covering such topics as biotransformations, carbohydrates, organometallic chemistry, insect antifeedants, spiroketal preparation, and various methods for heterocyclic ring synthesis, including an innovative combinatorial chemistry approach to natural product construction. The third area is in the development of new synthetic methods and reagents that have been used in natural product chemistry. One example is the catalytic tetra-n-propylammonium perruthenate (TPAP) reagent, now commercially available and cited in numerous natural product syntheses. A fellow of the Royal Society, in London, he has received a host of prizes and awards in the U.K. and Europe, including the Royal Society's Davy Medal in 2000. He was president of the U.K.'s Royal Society of Chemistry from 2000 to 2002--an accomplishment hinted at in 1980, when he received the RSC's Corday Morgan Medal & Prize, considered a pointer for future high-fliers. He was the first recipient of the GlaxoWellcome Award for Outstanding Achievement in Organic Chemistry, in 1999, and has recently received the Pfizer Award for Innovative Science. He also has held distinguished or named lectureships at universities and research institutes around the world. In addition, Ley has held a wide variety of national and international appointments, including chairing various U.K. governmental panels and research councils, and he has served on a number of international advisory committees of the International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry. He has also held advisory posts with companies as diverse as Novartis and BP. The award address will be presented before the Division of Organic Chemistry.--PAT SHORT |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Chemical & Engineering News |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
