Inventors Recognized in Hall of Fame

Thirteen people will be inducted this year into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (C&EN Online, Latest News, Feb. 11). Seven of them are being recognized posthumously.

The Inventors Hall of Fame recognizes a new group of inventors every year for their "patented inventions that make human, social, and economic progress possible."

Among the notable chemists being inducted are the following:

Glenn T. Seaborg (1912–99), for his isolation and discovery of plutonium. Seaborg, a 1951 Chemistry Nobel Laureate, is the only person to have held a patent on a chemical element and the only person to have had an element named after him while he was alive.

Leo Sternbach, for his development of Valium. Sternbach, a Polish scientist who fled Nazi Europe in 1941, also invented Librium while working at Hoffman-La Roche.

Selman A. Waksman (1888–1973), for his invention of streptomycin, the first effective treatment of tuberculosis. Waksman, who coined the term antibiotic, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1952.

The other living inventors recognized were C. Donald Bateman, for the Ground Proximity Warning System; Robert Gundlach, for the modern photocopier; Sir Alec J. Jeffreys, for genetic fingerprinting; Dean Kamen, for the AutoSyringe; and Les Paul, for the solid-body electric guitar.

Also being recognized posthumously are Matthias W. Baldwin, for the steam locomotive; Clarence Birdseye, for frozen foods; Leopold Godowsky Jr. and Leopold Mannes, for Kodachrome color film; Garrett A. Morgan, for the gas mask and traffic signal; and Jacob Rabinow, for optical character recognition.