The name Kavli is well known among scientists for being attached to esteemed institutes, prizes, and lectures that spur and celebrate scientific advancement. That’s exactly what Fred Kavli wanted. An engineer and entrepreneur, he left his fortune to science in the form of The Kavli Foundation.

Now in its 20^th year, The Kavli Foundation aims to advance science, promote public understanding of scientific research, and support the work of scientists. “The Kavli Foundation is truly a unique organization,” says Madeleine Jacobs, former CEO of the American Chemical Society (ACS) who helped establish a partnership between the two organizations. Many foundations support science, she adds, but The Kavli Foundation does things differently. Part of that uniqueness is the foundation’s sponsoring of lectures at scientific societies that work in nanoscience, astronomy and astrophysics, and neuroscience, Jacobs says.

The Kavli Foundation has been partnering with the ACS to host two lectures at each of the society’s national meetings for the last decade. These well-attended sessions bring together practitioners of disparate branches of chemistry and serve to educate and unify the scientific community. “We are very grateful to collaborate with The Kavli Foundation to host these lectures. The Kavli innovative approach to interdisciplinary science highlights topics often overlooked by other major recognitions and awards,” says ACS CEO Thomas Connelly Jr. “Regardless of the field of chemistry you study, listening to these lectures allows you to connect with the broader field and to feel a part of the chemistry enterprise.”

Innovations

Fred Kavli was born in 1927 in Eresfjord, a rural village in Norway. “He was a farm boy from a small farm in a remote fjord, where he enjoyed nature and first thought about life’s big questions,” says Chris Martin, director of physical sciences at The Kavli Foundation.

FRED KAVLI (1927-2013), a Norwegian-born U.S. citizen, was a physicist, entrepreneur, business leader, innovator, and philanthropist dedicated to supporting research and education that has a positive, long-term impact on the human condition.

Courtesy Kavli Foundation

Humble beginnings did not hinder young Kavli from developing his engineering prowess. Petroleum was scarce during World War II, so at age 14, Fred, with his older brother Aslak, turned wood into automobile fuel. “You’d never think this would work, but you could come up with anything during times of war,” Martin says. The brothers invented a machine that pressed and shaped wood shavings and scraps into uniform-sized briquettes, which people would then burn to run their cars. Aslak later patented the invention, providing funds that helped Fred study physics at the Norwegian Institute of Technology (now known as the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim).

After getting his degree, Fred Kavli left Norway to seek his fortune in the US, where he founded Kavlico in 1958. Martin says the company specialized in sensors that worked under harsh pressure and temperature conditions. Kavlico’s first contract was with the military to build a sensor that could report linear movement for an atomic-powered airplane. Such planes never became operational, but Kavlico’s sensors found their way into other military craft, such as Stealth Bombers, as well as into the Space Shuttle.

Having mastered sensing technologies for extreme environments, Kavli was ready for a new challenge: mass-producing inexpensive yet durable precision sensors for Ford Motor. This achievement helped turn Kavlico into a manufacturer with 1,400 employees that got sold to a Canadian company for $331 million in 2000. As successful as Kavlico was in the sensor industry, many view what its founder did next as his true legacy.

The same year that Kavlico was sold, Kavli established The Kavli Foundation with the proceeds from divesting his interest in the company. “He gave essentially 100% of his estate to basic science,” Martin says. “All of it rolled into the foundation and fulfilled this dream of his to give back to society.”

Kavli set up the foundation to advance science for the benefit of humanity. He selected specific fields in which to support basic research that he called the biggest, the smallest, and the most complex: astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience, and, with The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and The Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, established a $1-million Kavli Prize awarded in each of these fields every two years. But the foundation’s flagship endeavor is the 20 Kavli institutes, which focus on advancing these same areas of basic science.

Chemical connections

The Kavli Foundation is also dedicated to public engagement with science. It awards a well-known prize in science journalism and partners with societies, including the ACS, to disseminate ideas and research. “The Kavli Foundation wants to work with the best scientific societies around the world, of which the American Chemical Society is certainly one,” Martin says. He adds that the foundation also wants to help the societies bolster their own missions.

The inaugural Kavli Foundation Innovations in Chemistry Lecture was held in 2011. From left is Nancy B. Jackson, Jacobs, inaugural lecturer Virgil Percec, Robert W. Conn, and Bonnie A. Charpentier.

Credit : ACS C&EN

Such an opportunity presented itself during Jacobs’s tenure at ACS. Before 2011, ACS national meetings lacked a plenary lecture—a session meant for all attendees—and Jacobs wanted to find a way to integrate the entire event. “This was a chance to have a lecture that everyone could come to,” Jacobs says. “It would be a highlight.”

In 2010, Jacobs began conversations with The Kavli Foundation to create a plenary lecture at the ACS national meetings. From the foundation’s perspective, a plenary lecture is an opportunity to advance the public understanding of science, Martin says. In this case, the public is meeting attendees who are experts in their fields but not intimately familiar with others.

The foundation’s leadership and Jacobs hit upon the idea of having a lecture that “brought forward the very best of all of chemistry and highlighted that for all of the participants at the annual meeting,” Martin says. The idea materialized as the Kavli Foundation Innovations in Chemistry Lecture. The initial agreement between ACS and the foundation outlined criteria for the choice of lecturer and the selection process.

“We put together a strong selection method,” with an eye toward groundbreaking discoveries, Jacobs says. “The Kavli Foundation left the selection up to us—they didn’t want approval rights, but they wanted a process that would ensure quality.”

The first of these lectures was given at the Fall 2011 ACS National Meeting & Expo, with Jacobs in attendance. There was “an amazing turnout,” she recalls. “The ballroom was just packed. We knew we had something right.” That was only the beginning. Such a large gathering created room for a second Kavli lecture, this one focused on young chemistry talent: the Kavli Foundation Emerging Leader in Chemistry Lecture.

César de la Fuente-Núñez of the University of Pennsylvania was to deliver the Emerging Leader in Chemistry Lecture at the Spring 2020 ACS National Meeting. It was terminated because of the COVID-19 pandemic, so de la Fuente will give the lecture at the spring 2021 meeting in San Antonio. His work illustrates the kind of science that can bridge many fields—the kind that The Kavli Foundation is eager to support. “We do a lot of chemistry, synthetic biology, computation, microbiology, and physics,” de la Fuente says. “But chemistry is at the heart of a lot of what we do.”

His team is working toward computational strategies for developing novel antibiotics, though de la Fuente had at least three COVID-19 investigations underway. They include the development of a biosensor for early detection of SARSCoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. De la Fuente says he is humbled by becoming an ACS Kavli lecturer and is looking forward to presenting his team’s research next year.

The ACS Fall 2020 National Meeting & Expo will be held virtually, including the Kavli lectures (see box). Jacobs is confident that, although the global pandemic makes large gatherings unsafe, the lectures will continue to be a source of togetherness. “No matter what field of chemistry you are working in, you come to this plenary and you feel part of this larger universe of chemistry.”