ACS Award in Analytical Chemistry

Sponsored by Battelle Memorial Institute

Milos V. Novotny, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Lilly Chemistry Alumni Chair at Indiana University, Bloomington, is honored for his extraordinary success in working at the boundaries between analytical chemistry and biological sciences.

His research interests embrace bioanalytical chemistry, chromatography and electrophoresis of proteins and glycoconjugates, biomolecular mass spectrometry, mechanism of diabetic neuropathies, chemical communication in mammals, and glycoproteins and carbohydrate metabolism.

According to one colleague, Novotny has made a significant impact in three major areas of analytical chemistry: the development of its foundation through fundamental studies in separation science and the development of instrumentation; the application of analytical tools to important scientific problems; and the training of outstanding undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral associates, and scientific visitors.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Novotny carried out pioneering studies in capillary gas chromatography and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. In one notable project, he designed the gas chromatographic column used on the National Aeronautics & Space Administration's Viking Lander Mission that touched down on Mars in 1976.

Novotny played a key role in the development of microcolumn (capillary) liquid chromatography and supercritical fluid chromatography and is renowned throughout the world as a major developer of capillary electrophoresis. He has also made important contributions to the development of capillary electrochromatography and high-performance liquid chromatography, including new column technologies, enhancement of detection capabilities, pulsed-field capillary electrophoresis, and affinity separations.

Novotny has been interested in bioanalytical measurements in fields as diverse as diabetes research, steroid metabolism, mammalian pheromones, and protein and polysaccharide structure determination. He has, for example, used ultrasensitive laser-induced fluorescence measurements and related techniques for high-sensitivity peptide and oligosaccharide mapping. He carried out the first resolution of monosaccharide enantiomers by capillary electrophoresis and also used pulsed-field capillary electrophoresis to separate large DNA fragments. More recently, his group has embarked on several projects to characterize structurally and physically glycoproteins and polysaccharides of importance to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.

Born in 1942, Novotny received the equivalent of a B.S. degree in chemistry and physics from the University of Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1962, and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the same university in 1965.

In 1971, he was appointed assistant professor of chemistry at Indiana University, where he became professor in 1978 and Distinguished Professor in 1999. Since 2004, he has also been adjunct professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine and director of the university's Institute for Pheromone Research and of the National Center for Glycomics & Glycoproteomics.

Novotny has authored more than 400 research papers, reviews, and book chapters, and he holds 15 patents. He has served on the editorial boards of numerous scientific journals.

He served as chairman of the 1980 Gordon Conference on Analytical Chemistry and has received numerous awards for his research and educational activities. For example, he received the 1986 ACS Award in Chromatography, the 1988 ACS Chemical Instrumentation Award, and the 1992 ACS Award in Separation Science & Technology. He was named "Scientist of the Year" by R&D Magazine in 1994.

Novotny is a member of two foreign academies: the Royal Society for Sciences (Sweden) and the Learned Society of the Czech Republic. He is also a recipient of several distinctions and honorary degrees from European institutions.

The award address will be presented before the Division of Analytical Chemistry.-MICHAEL FREEMANTLE