Jacqueline Barton Selected For Gibbs Medal

The ACS Chicago Section will present Jacqueline K. Barton, the Arthur & Marian Hanisch Memorial Professor of Chemistry at California Institute of Technology, with the Willard Gibbs Award at a dinner to be held on Friday, May 12, at Chateau Rand in Des Plaines, Ill.

The Gibbs Award recognizes exceptional individuals whose pioneering work has opened new fields of chemical research. This award recognizes Barton's impact on the understanding of the molecular chemistry of DNA and its relevance to the development of a variety of diseases and inherited abnormalities. Registration is required to attend the dinner. Information may be obtained at membership.acs.org/C/Chicago/home.html.

Barton pioneered the application of transition-metal complexes as tools to probe recognition and reactions of double-helical DNA. This work provides a new approach to the study of DNA structure and dynamics. She has carried out important studies to examine the transport of electric charge through DNA, establishing reactions by which DNA can be damaged from a distance, as well as how photochemical lesions in DNA can be repaired, locally or at distant sites, on the DNA helix.

Barton is the recipient of numerous awards, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1991, the 1988 ACS Award in Pure Chemistry, the 1992 Garvan Medal, the 1997 William H. Nichols Medal, and the Breslow Award in Biomimetic Chemistry in 2003. This is the first time that a husband and wife have both received the Gibbs Medal; her husband, Peter B. Dervan, was awarded the Gibbs Medal in 1993. Barton is also only the second woman to receive this award; the first was Marie Curie in 1921.