Comment: Planting the seeds of future award recipients

Awards in chemistry serve multiple purposes. They recognize individual achievement and provide inspiration to other chemical professionals and students. They motivate scientists to engage in more challenging research and are a way to celebrate significant contributions by individual chemists or teams. Ultimately, awards reflect what the chemistry community values.

Many American Chemical Society members may not be aware that part of the mission of the Committee on Science (ComSci) is to recognize outstanding chemical scientists. We do that by recommending distinguished scientists to the American Chemical Society Board of Directors to be ACS nominees for awards such as the National Medal of Science, the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the Dreyfus Prize in the Chemical Sciences, the Grand Prix de la Fondation de la Maison de la Chimie (France), and other international prizes. For ACS Board–approved nominees, ComSci works with ACS staff and the individual scientists to assemble the nomination materials.

As previous ACS Comments in 2016 and 2022 have pointed out, an important priority for the board has been for the ACS National Awards program to be as diverse and inclusive as possible regarding the outstanding work in chemistry that we recognize. This emphasis aligns with the ACS core values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and respect. ComSci has also been concerned with ensuring that our nominee recommendations to the board for external awards reflect the diversity of the chemistry community. During the past 3 years, we have revised our process to help ensure that we are considering a diverse and inclusive set of excellent potential nominees.

During my 3 years as committee chair, I’ve come to understand the interconnected nature of awards. For awards like the Dreyfus Prize or the National Medal of Science, the nomination must include information about past awards the individual has received. Past awards received by an individual can significantly affect the competitiveness of a nomination. As the members of the awards subcommittee reviewed possible nominees, in some cases, we found individuals who clearly had carried out important chemical research but had received very little recognition through awards.

Participating in those discussions led me to realize that we need to think of awards and recognition in chemistry—and other scientific fields—as an “ecosystem.” An ecosystem is characterized not only as a variety of components but also as a complex web of interactions among those components. As with any system, those interactions also give rise to emergent complexity, properties, and characteristics that can be very different from those seen in the individual components. Significant changes do not always come from the most obvious locations.

How does this relate to awards? If ComSci wants to consider diverse pools of individuals for awards such as the National Medal of Science or the Dreyfus Prize, we must make an effort to ensure that “prerequisite awards” also have diverse and inclusive pools of potential nominees. Examples of prerequisite awards might include the various ACS National Awards and recognitions such as the ACS Publications journal awards and lectureships, the Kavli Foundation Emerging Leader in Chemistry Award, and awards presented by local ACS sections such as the Willard Gibbs Award or Pauling Medal Award.

Every ACS member reading this Comment can contribute to this process. As Brian Eno once wrote, “the precise moment you’re in grows out of the past and is a seed for the future.” What if each ACS member were to ask, “What award or lectureship am I well positioned to nominate someone for?” and then take action by assembling and submitting that nomination? The pool of potential nominees would be significantly larger and more diverse and inclusive, which would have a real impact on the diversity of individuals we recognize through awards. Within a decade, some of those individuals could be potential nominees for external awards like the Dreyfus Prize or the Grand Prix.

What I’m suggesting isn’t a quick fix for establishing a more diverse and inclusive body of individuals we recognize in chemistry. Other work will need to be done; some proposed steps have received attention from the ACS Board of Directors over the past decade. I know from my own experience that preparing a nomination package can be a time-consuming project. But this endeavor is a way to plant seeds for future recipients of distinguished awards like the National Medal of Science, the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, and the Grand Prix. If individual ACS members were to make this effort now, perhaps a future chair of ComSci will write an ACS Comment about how impressive and diverse the group of potential nominees was that the awards subcommittee considered.

Views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of C&EN or ACS.