Joel Henry Hildebrand Award In The Theoretical And Experimental Chemistry Of Liquids: Kenneth S. Schweizer

Sponsor: ExxonMobil Research & ­Engineering

Citation: For the pioneering development of microscopic predictive and unified theories of the structure, phase behavior, and slow dynamics of complex liquids, glasses, and gels.

Current position: G. Ronald & Margaret H. Morris Professor of Materials Science, professor of chemistry and chemical and biomolecular engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Education: B.S., physics, Drexel University; Ph.D., physics, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Schweizer on challenges in his work: “Working at the interface of physics, chemistry, and materials science requires an appreciation of the scientific language, style, and motivations of each community. Acquiring this has been important for pursuing the goal of creating predictive theoretical approaches for interdisciplinary problems that are relevant to experiment. It also guides my search for the optimal balance between rigor and practical usefulness, the chemical versus physical aspects, and simplicity versus complexity.”

What his colleagues say:“Ken’s main strength has been to creatively build on techniques from the field of simple liquids and qualitatively generalize them, for the first time, to successfully describe the richer behavior exhibited by complex fluids and polymeric systems.”—David Reichman, Columbia University