Alivisatos And Lieber Win Wolf Prize In Chemistry

A. Paul Alivisatos, Larry & Diane Bock Professor of Nanotechnology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Charles M. Lieber, Mark Hyman Jr. Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University, are the recipients of the 2012 Wolf Prize in Chemistry, awarded by the Wolf Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Israel.

Alivisatos is being honored for his development of the colloidal inorganic nanocrystal as a building block of nanoscience and for his fundamental contributions to controlling the synthesis of these particles.

Lieber is being recognized for developing new methods to control the shape and heterostructure of nanowires, for characterizing their physical properties, and for demonstrating their potential applications.

The Wolf Prizes are sometimes referred to as the Israeli Nobels. In addition to the chemistry prize, awards are given annually in agriculture, mathematics, medicine, physics, and the arts. The Wolf Prizes were established by the late German-born inventor, diplomat, and philanthropist Ricardo Wolf to promote science and art for the benefit of humankind.

Alivisatos and Lieber will share the $100,000 prize, which will be awarded during a ceremony on May 13 at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem.