Bush Presents National Medals

President George W. Bush presented the 2003 National Medals of Science and the National Medals of Technology in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on March 14. These medals represent the nation's highest honors in science and technology. Choosing the laureates typically takes a year but can take longer--as was the case for the 2003 awards.

Among the 2003 National Medal of Technology recipients is the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which was nominated by ACS. "We are absolutely thrilled and appreciate so much the American Chemical Society nominating us," says WARF's managing director, Carl E. Gulbrandsen, who accepted the medal on behalf of the foundation. "Of course, winning the award was an even greater thrill."

The other 2003 Technology laureates include Jan D. Achenbach, Northwestern University; Watts S. Humphrey, Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh; Robert M. Metcalfe, Polaris Venture Partners, Waltham, Mass.; and the team of Rodney D. Bagley, retired from Corning Inc., Corning, N.Y., Irwin Lachman, retired from Corning Inc., and Ronald M. Lewis, former employee of Corning Inc. UOP LLC, Des Plaines, Ill., also received a Technology medal.

The 2003 National Medal of Science laureates are R. Duncan Luce, University of California, Irvine, in behavioral or social sciences; J. Michael Bishop, University of California, San Francisco, in biological sciences; Solomon H. Snyder, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in biological sciences; Charles Yanofsky, Stanford University, in biological sciences; John M. Prausnitz, University of California, Berkeley, in engineering; Carl R. De Boor, University of Wisconsin, Madison, in mathematics; G. Brent Dalrymple, Oregon State University, in physical sciences; and Riccardo Giacconi, Johns Hopkins University, in physical sciences.