The Priestley Medal is the highest honor conferred by the

American Chemical Society The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all ...

(ACS) and is awarded for distinguished service in the field of

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the elements that make up matter to the compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, proper ...

. Established in 1922, the award is named after

Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley (; 24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist. He published over 150 works, and conducted ...

, the discoverer of

oxygen Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements ...

who immigrated to the

United States of America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

in 1794. The ACS formed in 1876, spearheaded by a group of chemists who had met two years previously in Priestley's home. The Priestley Medal is commonly awarded to scientists who are advanced in their fields, as it is intended to commemorate lifetime achievement. When the ACS started presenting the Priestley Medal in 1923, they intended to award it every three years. This continued until 1944, when it became an annual award.

Recipients

;1920s * 1923 Ira Remsen * 1926 Edgar Fahs Smith * 1929 Francis P. Garvan ;1930s * 1932 Charles L. Parsons * 1935

William A. Noyes William Albert Noyes (November 6, 1857 – October 24, 1941) was an American analytical and organic chemist. He made pioneering determinations of atomic weights, chaired the Chemistry Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Cha ...

* 1938 Marston T. Bogert ;1940s * 1941 Thomas Midgley, Jr. * 1944 James Bryant Conant * 1945 Ian Heilbron * 1946 Roger Adams * 1947 Warren K. Lewis * 1948 Edward R. Weidlein * 1949 Arthur B. Lamb ;1950s * 1950 Charles A. Kraus * 1951 E. J. Crane * 1952 Samuel C. Lind * 1953 Sir Robert Robinson * 1954 W. Albert Noyes, Jr. (son of

) * 1955 Charles A. Thomas * 1956 Carl S. Marvel * 1957 Farrington Daniels * 1958 Ernest H. Volwiler * 1959 Hermann Irving Schlesinger ;1960s * 1960 Wallace R. Brode * 1961

Louis Plack Hammett Louis Plack Hammett (April 7, 1894 – February 9, 1987) was an American physical chemist. He is known for the Hammett equation, which relates reaction rates to equilibrium constants for certain classes of organic reactions involving subs ...

* 1962 Joel H. Hildebrand * 1963

Peter J. W. Debye Peter Joseph William Debye (; ; March 24, 1884 – November 2, 1966) was a Dutch-American physicist and physical chemist, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry. Biography Early life Born Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije in Maastricht, Netherlands, D ...

* 1964 John C. Bailar, Jr. * 1965 William J. Sparks * 1966

William O. Baker William Oliver Baker (July 15, 1915 – October 31, 2005) was president of Bell Labs from 1973 to 1979 and advisor on scientific matters to five United States presidents. Biography He was born on July 15, 1915 in Chestertown, Maryland. He receive ...

* 1967 Ralph Connor * 1968

William G. Young William Glover Young (born September 23, 1940) is a Senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Education and career Born in Huntington, New York, Young received an Artium Baccalaur ...

* 1969 Kenneth S. Pitzer ;1970s * 1970

Max Tishler Max Tishler (October 30, 1906 – March 18, 1989) was president of Merck Sharp and Dohme Research Laboratories where he led the research teams that synthesized ascorbic acid, riboflavin, cortisone, pyridoxine, pantothenic acid, nicotinamide, m ...

* 1971 Frederick D. Rossini * 1972 George B. Kistiakowsky * 1973

Harold C. Urey Harold Clayton Urey ( ; April 29, 1893 – January 5, 1981) was an American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934 for the discovery of deuterium. He played a significant role in the ...

* 1974 Paul J. Flory * 1975 Henry Eyring * 1976 George S. Hammond * 1977

Henry Gilman Henry Gilman (May 9, 1893 – November 7, 1986) was an American organic chemist known as the father of organometallic chemistry, the field within which his most notable work was done. He discovered the Gilman reagent, which bears his name. Earl ...

* 1978 Melvin Calvin * 1979 Glenn T. Seaborg ;1980s * 1980 Milton Harris * 1981

Herbert C. Brown Herbert Charles Brown (May 22, 1912 – December 19, 2004) was an American chemist and recipient of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work with organoboranes. Life and career Brown was born Herbert Brovarnik in London, to Ukrainian Jewis ...

* 1982 Bryce Crawford, Jr. * 1983 Robert S. Mulliken * 1984 Linus Pauling * 1985

Henry Taube Henry Taube, (November 30, 1915 – November 16, 2005) was a Canadian-born American chemist who was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "his work in the mechanisms of electron-transfer reactions, especially in metal complexes." He ...

* 1986 Karl A. Folkers * 1987

John D. Roberts John Dombrowski Roberts (June 8, 1918 – October 29, 2016) was an American chemist. He made contributions to the integration of physical chemistry, spectroscopy, and organic chemistry for the understanding of chemical reaction rates. Another ...

* 1988 Frank H. Westheimer * 1989

George C. Pimentel George Claude Pimentel (May 2, 1922 – June 18, 1989) was the inventor of the chemical laser. He also developed the technique of matrix isolation in low-temperature chemistry. In theoretical chemistry, he proposed the three-center four-electron b ...

;1990s * 1990 Roald Hoffmann * 1991 Harry B. Gray * 1992

Carl Djerassi Carl Djerassi (October 29, 1923 – January 30, 2015) was an Austrian-born Bulgarian-American pharmaceutical chemist, novelist, playwright and co-founder of Djerassi Resident Artists Program with Diane Wood Middlebrook. He is best known for his ...

* 1993 Robert W. Parry * 1994 Howard E. Simmons * 1995 Sir Derek H. R. Barton * 1996 Ernest L. Eliel * 1997 Mary L. Good * 1998 F. Albert Cotton * 1999

Ronald Breslow Ronald Charles David Breslow (March 14, 1931 – October 25, 2017) was an American chemist from Rahway, New Jersey. He was University Professor at Columbia University, where he was based in the Department of Chemistry and affiliated with the De ...

;2000s * 2000 Darleane C. Hoffman * 2001

Fred Basolo Fred Basolo (11 February 1920 – 27 February 2007) was an American inorganic chemist. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1943, under Prof. John C. Bailar, Jr. Basolo spent his professional career at Nort ...

* 2002

Allen J. Bard Allen Joseph Bard (born December 18, 1933) is an American chemist. He is the Hackerman-Welch Regents Chair Professor and director of the Center for Electrochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin. Bard is considered a "father of modern el ...

* 2003 Edwin J. Vandenberg * 2004 Elias J. Corey * 2005 George A. Olah * 2006

Paul S. Anderson Paul S. Anderson (born February 3, 1938) is an American chemist. He worked at Merck, DuPont-Merck, and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Early life and education Paul S. Anderson was born February 3, 1938, in Concord, Vermont, and grew up in Swanton, Ve ...

* 2007

George M. Whitesides George McClelland Whitesides (born August 3, 1939) is an American chemist and professor of chemistry at Harvard University. He is best known for his work in the areas of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, organometallic chemistry, molecula ...

* 2008 Gabor A. Somorjai * 2009 M. Frederick Hawthorne ;2010s * 2010 Richard Zare * 2011 Ahmed H. Zewail * 2012

Robert S. Langer Robert Samuel Langer Jr. FREng (born August 29, 1948) is an American chemical engineer, scientist, entrepreneur, inventor and one of the twelve Institute Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was formerly the Germeshaus ...

* 2013

Peter J. Stang Peter John Stang (born November 17, 1941) is a German American chemist and Distinguished Professor of chemistry at the University of Utah. He was the editor-in-chief of the '' Journal of the American Chemical Society'' from 2002 to 2020. Biograp ...

* 2014 Stephen J. Lippard *2015

Jacqueline Barton Jacqueline K. Barton (born May 7, 1952 New York City, NY), is an American chemist. She worked as a Professor of Chemistry at Hunter College (1980–82), and at Columbia University (1983–89) before joining the California Institute of Technology ...

*2016

Mostafa El-Sayed Mostafa A. El-Sayed (Arabic: مصطفى السيد) is an Egyptian-American physical chemist, a leading nanoscience researcher, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a US National Medal of Science laureate. He was the editor-in-chief ...

*2017 Tobin J. Marks *2018 Geraldine L. Richmond * 2019 Karl Barry Sharpless ;2020s * 2020 JoAnne Stubbe * 2021

A. Paul Alivisatos Armand Paul Alivisatos (born November 12, 1959) is an American chemist who serves as the 14th president of the University of Chicago. He is a pioneer in nanomaterials development and an authority on the fabrication of nanocrystals and their use i ...

* 2022 Peter B. DervanPeter Dervan Named 2022 Priestley Medalist
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References

External links

The Priestley Society
{{Joseph Priestley Awards of the American Chemical Society Awards established in 1922

Recipients

See also

References

Further reading

External links