Winners Of Franklin Institute Awards Announced

Laureates of the 2007 Franklin Institute Awards, which recognize significant discoveries and achievements in science, business, and technology, include the following chemists and physicists:

Klaus Biemann, professor emeritus of chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, received the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry for pioneering the development of mass spectrometry, used to determine structure of complex molecules including sequencing of peptides and proteins, thus enabling the field of proteomics.

Nancy S. Wexler, Higgins Professor of Neuropsychology at Columbia University received the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science for leading the combined efforts to identify the gene responsible for Huntington's disease and establishing a model used to investigate the genetic basis of other inherited diseases.

Arthur B. McDonald, research chair at Queen's University, and Yoji Totsuka, a professor at the University of Tokyo, received the medal in physics for their discovery that the three known types of neutrinos—electron, muon, and tau—change into one another when traveling long distances and have mass.

The Benjamin Franklin Medals are awarded in seven disciplines of science.