Monthly Archives: August 2013

James Stoddart obtained his B.Sc. in 1964 and his Ph.D. in 1966 from Edinburgh University. In 1967, he was appointed as a National Research Council postdoctoral fellow at Queen’s University in Canada, and in 1970 an Imperial Chemical Industries Research Fellow at Sheffield University. He taught at Sheffield and Birmingham Universities, then joined the University of California, Los Angeles in 1997 as Saul Winstein Professor of Organic Chemistry, and, in 2003, as a Fred Kavil Professor of NanoSystems Sciences and the Director of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI).

A world authority in mechanical chemistry and nanoscience, Stoddart created a new and promising field of chemistry by introducing mechanical bonds into chemical compounds. Using molecular recognition and self-assembly processes he is able to build mechanically interlocked molecules that can be used as functioning devices after the same style as those found in the living world. These extremely tiny nano-mechanical devices (1 nanometer = 1 billionth of a meter) operate based on the relative movements of molecular components and can be activated chemically, electrically and optically. As such, they hold considerable promise for fabrication and use as switches, sensors, actuators, amplifiers, motors, molecular random access memories, etc. Smaller than a human cell, some of these devices may also have the potential of being used to deliver drugs into cancer cells. Professor Stoddart currently leads a large body of researchers and visiting scientists. During the past 35 years, he mentored more than 280 Ph.D. students and postdoctoral scholars, many of whom are now pursuing successful academic careers of their own. He has published more than 770 papers, delivered over 700 invited lectures worldwide, and ranked as one of the most highly cited chemists in the world.

Stoddart’s outstanding achievements in chemistry and molecular nanotechnology were recognized by numerous prizes, honorary degrees, named lectureships and visiting or honorary professorships throughout the world. He has been awarded fellowships and memberships of several prestigious academies and societies, including the Royal Society of London. In 2004, he received the Nagoya Gold Medal in Organic Chemistry and at the turn of 2007, he was named Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II of Britain.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

Ferenc Krausz studied theoretical physics at Eötvös Loránd University and electrical engineering at Budapest University of Technology in Budapest, Hungary, receiving his Diploma in Electrical Engineering with Distinction in 1985. He pursued his Ph.D. studies in Quantum Electronics at the Institute of Physics in Budapest University of Technology (1985-1987) and the Department of Electrical Engineering at Vienna University of Technology (VUT) in Vienna, Austria (1988-1991), where he also spent the following two years as a postdoctoral fellow, obtaining his Habilitation with distinction from the Department of Electrical Engineering in 1993. He joined the same institute as an assistant professor, from 1996-1998, and rose to a full professorship in 1999. In 2003, he was appointed as the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, where he leads the Attosecond Physics Division, and in 2004, he became the chair of experimental physics at the Ludwig Maximilians University (LMU) in Munich. In 2006, he co-founded the Munich-Center of Advanced Photonics and became one of its directors. He is currently the Chair of Experimental Physics at LMU in Munich and the Director of Max-Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, and Director of the Munich-Center for Advanced Photonics.

Professor Krausz’s main fields of research include: ultrashort-pulse laser technology, high-field physics and attosecond physics. His other fields of interest include nonlinear optics, atomic physics, plasma physics, and x-ray physics. Krausz and his team generated and measured the first attosecond light pulse and used it for capturing electrons’ motion inside atoms at incredibly fast speed (1 attosecond is a billionth of a billionth of second). This is considered by Nature and Science magazines to be one of the ten greatest achievements in all areas of science.

Professor Krausz’s works were recognized by several awards and honors including the Wittgenstein Award in Austria (2002); the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in Germany (2006); the Fritz Kohlrausch Award of the Austrian Physical Society (1994); the START Award of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Education (1996); Carl Zeiss Award of the Ernst Abbe Foundation (1998); the Julius Springer Award in Applied Physics (2003); the IEEE/LEOS Quantum Electronics Award (2006); the British “Progress Medal” of the Royal Photographic Society (2006), and the order of merit “Verdienstkreuz am Bande” (order of merit) of the Federal Republic of Germany (2011). He was also awarded an Honorary Professorship at the Vienna Technical University (2005), and an Honorary Doctorate Degree from the Technical University Budapest (2005).

Professor Krausz is a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in Salzburg (Austria), and a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

Paul Bruce Corkum received his B.Sc. in physics from Acadia University in Wolfville, NS, Canada in 1965, and both his M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA, USA in 1967 and 1972, respectively. He joined the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada in 1973. He is currently the National Research Council-Canada Research Chair in Attosecond Photonics and Professor of Physics at the University of Ottawa.

Professor Corkum is a renowned authority on lasers and their applications. For more than three decades, he has been developing and advancing knowledge on how intense laser light pulses can be used to study the structure of matter. His research has consistently been characterized by a deep physical insight accompanied by elegant models and supported by highly original experiments, which led to major advances in atomic and molecular physics.

Professor Corkum’s innovative research and contributions to physics have earned him wide recognition. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Fellow of the Royal Society of London and Foreign member of US Academy of Sciences. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America. In 2007, he was inducted to the Order-of-Canada. His other honors and awards include: Gold Medal of the Canadian Association of Physicist for lifetime achievement in Physics (1996); Einstein Award of the Society for Optical and Quantum Electronics (1999); Tory Medal of the Royal Society of Canada (2003); LEOS distinguished lectureship; (2001-2003); Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II: Golden Jubilee Medal (2003); Charles Townes award of the Optical Society of America (2005); IEEE’s Quantum Electronics award (2005); Killam Prize for Physical Sciences (2006); The American Physical Society’s Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science (2006); the Polanyi Prize of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) (2007); NSERC’s Herzberg Prize (2009) and Zewail Award of the American Chemical Society (2010). He was also awarded honorary doctoral degrees from both Acadia University (2006) and the University of Western Ontario (2009) in Canada.

Professor Corkum authored more than 240 peer-reviewed papers, most of which were published in leading physics journals; he also edited several books and gave approximately 23 public, plenary or invited lectures per year. He mentored numerous M.Sc. and Ph.D. candidates, Postdoctoral Fellows, and visiting scientists in his laboratory. He also served for six years as a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Physics B, became its Deputy Editor from 2009-2011 and is currently its Editor. He is also a member of the editorial advisory board of the International Journal of Nonlinear Optics.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

Alexander Varshavsky obtained his B.S. in Chemistry from Moscow University in 1970 and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow in 1973. He then served for three years as a Research Fellow at the Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow before emigrating to the USA in 1977, where he was appointed as an Assistant Professor (1977-1980), then as an Associate Professor (1980-1986) at the Department of Biology at M.I.T. In 1986, he became a full Professor of Biology at M.I.T., a position he held for the next six years. In 1992, he moved to the Division of Biology at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, where he has since been the Howard and Gwen Laurie Smits Professor of Cell Biology.

Professor Varshavsky has also served as a member of the Molecular Cytology Study Section at the National Institutes of Health (1983-1987) and Visiting Fellow at the International Institute for Advanced Studies in Kyoto, Japan (2001). He was also a board member of the “Encyclopedia of Molecular Cell Biology and Molecular Medicine” (2002-2005), the Medical Advisory Board of Gairdner Foundation, Canada (2002-2006) and the O’Connor Advisory Committee, March of Dimes Foundation (2007-present).

Professor Varshavsky is renowned for his discovery of the N-end rule of ubiquitination that controls protein stability. For many years, his research has focused on understanding how the function of a protein is terminated to ensure homeostatic equilibrium. He has established the significance of a new regulatory system in which a small, ubiquitous protein, ubiquitin, plays a fundamental role in the systematic degradation of protein. His seminal findings have opened an entirely new field of research and provided powerful insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying the ubiquitin-dependent protein degradation system and its role in cellular processes during health and disease. Recently, Varshavsky developed the prospect of a targeted molecular device that could penetrate a cell, examine it for DNA deletions specific to cancer, and eliminate it should it fit the right criteria. Professor Varshavsky has also published more than 200 papers in leading international journals.

Professor Varshavsky’s enormous achievements have been recognized by numerous honors. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, Foreign Associate of the European Molecular Biology Organization and Foreign Member of the Academia Europaea. His honors also include a long list of honorary and plenary lectureships and numerous prestigious awards such as the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, the Wolf Prize in Medicine, the Gairdner International Award, the Louisa Gross Prize, the March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology, and the $1 million Gotham Prize.

Varshavsky’s work has unraveled the cellular mechanisms that determine how cellular proteins are being selected for destruction. He has also discovered how proteins are marked for rapid degradation. These advances have created a new realm of biology and have been essential for progress in research on human cancer, neurodegeneration, immune responses and other fundamental biological processes. This may lead to clinically useful therapies.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

Richard Zare received his B.A. in chemistry and physics (1961) and his Ph.D. in chemical physics (1964) at Harvard University. In 1965, he became an assistant professor of chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the following year he moved to the University of Colorado, where he held joint appointments in the department of chemistry and the department of physics and astrophysics. In 1969, he became a full professor at Columbia University, and in 1975, he was appointed as the Higgins Professor of Natural Science. He became a chemistry professor at Stanford University in 1977 and is currently the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science at Stanford.

Professor Zare is one of the most accomplished chemical physicists and laser chemists worldwide. He is most renowned for his discovery of “laser induced fluorescence,” which has become an important and highly sensitive technique for studying chemical reactions and chemical reaction dynamics at the molecular level as well as detecting trace amounts of compounds. Professor Zare ranks amongst the top 25 most highly cited chemists alive today. He has published more than 900 papers, holds more than 50 patents and has an H-index of about 104. His work has been cited more than 35,000 times and some of his papers have been cited over 500 times each. Professor Zare is also involved in astrobiology; his most highly cited work involves the examination of a 4.5 billion years old meteorite sample from Mars where he speculated that it might contain traces of primitive Martian life. He has also authored four books, the best known dealing with the topic of angular momentum in quantum systems.

Professor Zare’s outstanding contributions in the fields of chemical physics and laser spectroscopy have been recognized by numerous awards, including the U.S. National Medal of Science, the Welch Award in Chemistry, the Wolf Prize in Chemistry, the Priestley Medal from the American Chemical Society and the BBVA Foundation Award in Basic Sciences. He has also earned numerous awards for excellence in chemistry teaching, in addition to about ten honorary degrees from renowned US and international universities.

Professor Zare is also a member or fellow of many US and international academies and societies including the national science academies of the USA, Sweden, China and India, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Society of Chemistry (London), the American Chemical Society (ACS), the American Physical Society (APS), and TWAS, the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World. He has also served on the National Science Board of the National Science Foundation (1992-1998), with the last two years as its Chair, and as Chair of the President’s National Medal of Science Selection Committee (1997-2000). He is currently Chairman of the Board of Directors at Annual Reviews, Inc. and on the Board of Directors of the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. He is also a member of the editorial advisory boards of several scientific publications. He has given numerous named lectures at numerous universities in the USA and abroad.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

George Whitesides received his A.B. in chemistry from Harvard College (1960) and Ph.D. in chemistry from California Institute of Technology (1964). He served for nearly 20 years as a faculty member at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he played a major role in developing the Corey-House-Posner-Whitesides reaction. In 1982, he joined the Department of Chemistry at Harvard University, and was the Chairman of the Department in 1986-1989 and Mallinckrodt Professor of Chemistry in 1982-2004. He is now the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor of chemistry at Harvard.

Professor Whitesides’ legendary career in chemistry spans nearly 50 years and has earned him, as of 2009, the highest Hirsch Index rating of all living chemists. His contributions cover a wide range of topics including materials and organic surface chemistry, soft lithography, molecular self-assembly, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), organometallic chemistry, nanotechnology, microfluidics, microfabrication, and catalysis, energy production and conservation and rational drug design. He is best known for his contributions towards understanding how molecules arrange themselves on a surface. His studies have paved the way for many advances in nanoscience, novel electronic technologies, pharmaceutical sciences and medical diagnostics.

Professor Whitesides authored or co-authored more than 1100 research papers and holds over 50 patents. He mentored more than 300 scientists, co-founded more than 12 companies and participated in many evaluations addressing issues related to science and technology around the world.

He is a Fellow or Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Philosophical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Physics, the New York Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of Chemistry. the Indian National Academy of science, and the Chemical Research Society of India. He is also Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Member and Chair of the International Scientific Advisory Board of the Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica and Honorary Member of the Materials Research Society of India. He received many awards and honors including the U.S. National Medal of Science; the Welch Award; the Priestley Medal; the American Institute of Chemists Gold Medal; the Kyoto Prize for Advanced Technology; the Dan David Prize; the Nanoscience Prize; Prince of Asturias Award; Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry and the Inaugural Dreyfus Prize in Chemical Sciences. He also holds an Honorary Doctorate Degree from the University of Twente in the Netherlands. He is a member of the editorial boards of many scientific journals.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.