HIST award to Geoffrey and Marelene Rayner-Canham

The winners of the 2023 Joseph B. Lambert HIST Award for Outstanding Achievement in the History of Chemistry are Geoffrey W. Rayner-Canham and Marelene F. Rayner-Canham. This award honors their work on the history of women in science, particularly British women chemists.

Geoffrey Rayner-Canham is a professor emeritus at the Grenfall Campus, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and Marelene F. Rayner-Canham is a retired physics instructor from the same university.

The Rayner-Canhams have written four books about forgotten historical women scientists: Harriet Brooks: Pioneer Nuclear Scientist; A Devotion to Their Science: Pioneer Women of Radioactivity; Women in Chemistry: Their Changing Roles from Alchemical Times to the Mid-Twentieth Century; and Chemistry Was Their Life: Pioneering British Women Chemists, 1880–1949. The pair was also major contributors to the book Women in Their Element: Selected Women’s Contributions to the Periodic System and have published a large number of papers in the Bulletin for the History of Chemistry.

This award is sponsored by the American Chemical Society Division of the History of Chemistry (HIST). The award, which includes an engraved plaque and $1,500, will be presented to the Rayner-Canhams during ACS Fall 2023 in San Francisco.