Stephen Lippard named Cotton Medalist

Stephen J. Lippard, Arthur Amos Noyes Professor of Chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the 2016 recipient of the F. A. Cotton Medal, sponsored by the ACS Texas A&M University Section and the Texas A&M department of chemistry.

The Cotton Medal is named for the late F. Albert Cotton, who was the W. T. Doherty-Welch Foundation Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Texas A&M. Given annually since 1995, the award recognizes excellence in chemical research.

Lippard’s group discovered and named the first metallointercalators, platinum terpyridine complexes that insert between the DNA base pairs and unwind the duplex. This research led to extensive studies of the covalent interactions of cisplatin and related anticancer drugs with DNA. He is the 2014 recipient of the Priestley Medal, the American Chemical Society’s most prestigious honor.