Awards

• Nichols Medal To Allen Bard
• ExxonMobil Fellowship To Chan
• John Dawson Named Southern Chemist

Allen J. Bard, the Norman Hackerman-Welch Regents Chair and professor of chemistry at the University of Texas, Austin, received the William H. Nichols Medal of the ACS New York Section on April 15 for his work on the scanning electrochemical microscope, which allows chemical reactions and structures that are mere nanometers in diameter to be studied.

The award is given annually to encourage original research in chemistry. Nichols was a pioneer in the development of the chemical industry in the U.S. The medal is the oldest award presented by a local section of ACS; it recognizes outstanding achievement in chemical research.

In addition to helping develop the electrochemical microscope, Bard and his research group study the interaction between such things as electricity, light, and organic molecules. He jointly discovered electrogenerated chemiluminescence, the use of electricity to add electrons to molecules to make them glow during reactions. From this finding, an immunoassay test to identify and calculate precise amounts of substances using antibodies was developed. This chemiluminescent test is frequently used in countless labs across the country by infectious disease workers, geneticists, microbiologists, and other investigators.

Bard's previous honors include the 2002 Priestley Medal and a 2003 Presidential Citation from UT Austin. Since receiving the Nichols Medal, he has been selected as the Welch awardee (C&EN, May 17, page 12). Bard joined UT Austin in 1958 as an instructor and became a full professor in 1967. He edited the Journal of the American Chemical Society for 20 years and has served on editorial advisory boards of 21 journals.

Presenting papers at the symposium that accompanied the Nichols Medal were Paul A. Kohl, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta; Richard M. Crooks, Texas A&M University, College Station; Henry S. White, University of Utah; and Bard. In his acceptance address, which followed a banquet in his honor, Bard gave a brief, amusing talk, in which he postulated a comparative zoology of chemists. He dealt specifically with eagles, sharks, beavers, and inchworms, among other notable species.--LINDA RABER

ExxonMobil Fellowship To Chan

Julia Y. Chan, assistant professor of chemistry at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, will receive the 2004 ExxonMobil Faculty Fellowship Award in Solid State Chemistry at the fall ACS national meeting in Philadelphia. The award, administered by the ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry and made possible by a grant from ExxonMobil Research & Engineering, recognizes significant contributions to solid-state chemistry by junior faculty members at U.S. institutions.

Chan received her B.S. degree from Baylor University, Waco, Texas, in 1993 and a Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Davis, in 1998. She was then a postdoc at the National Institute of Standards & Technology from 1998 to 2000. She joined the chemistry faculty at LSU in 2000.

Her research has focused on the crystal growth and characterization of new intermetallic phases. She has investigated the magnetic properties of numerous new heavy fermion materials as well as discovered a new highly anisotropic layered material, LaSb₂, that exhibits a 100-fold linear increase in resistance between 0 and 45 T.

John Dawson Named Southern Chemist

John H. Dawson, carolina distinguished Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of South Carolina, has received the 2003 Southern Chemist Award. The award, presented annually since 1950 by the ACS Memphis Section, recognizes an outstanding chemist in the South.

Dawson was cited for his mechanistic studies of oxygen-activating heme enzymes, such as cytochrome P450, and for the use of magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopy to determine the active site structures of heme proteins. His proposal for the role of the cysteinate proximal ligand in facilitating cleavage of the O–O bond of heme iron-bound reduced dioxygen is the accepted paradigm for how P450 generates its reactive ferryl intermediate.