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 degree levels and in all fields of chemistry, chemical engineering, and related fields. It is one of the world's largest scientific societies by membership. The ACS is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and holds a congressional charter under Title 36 of the United States Code. Its headquarters are located in Washington, D.C., and it has a large concentration of staff in Columbus, Ohio.
The Priestley Medal is the highest honor conferred by the American Chemical Society (ACS) and is awarded for distinguished service in the field of chemistry. Established in 1922, the award is named after Joseph Priestley, one of the discoverers of oxygen, who immigrated to the United States of America in 1794. The ACS formed in 1876, spearheaded by a group of chemists who had met two years previously in Priestley's home.
Kyriacos Costa Nicolaou is a Cypriot-American chemist known for his research in the area of natural products total synthesis. He is currently Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Chemistry at Rice University, having previously held academic positions at The Scripps Research Institute/UC San Diego and the University of Pennsylvania.
Kendall Newcomb Houk is a Distinguished Research Professor in Organic Chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research group studies organic, organometallic, and biological reactions using the tools of computational chemistry. This work involves quantum mechanical calculations, often with density functional theory, and molecular dynamics, either quantum dynamics for small systems or force fields such as AMBER, for solution and protein simulations.
Steven Victor Ley is Professor of Organic Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, and is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was President of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2000–2002) and was made a CBE in January 2002, in the process. In 2011, he was included by The Times in the list of the "100 most important people in British science".
Robert George Bergman is an American chemist. He is Professor of the Graduate School and Gerald E. K. Branch Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.
The American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry is awarded annually by the American Chemical Society (ACS) "to recognize and encourage fundamental research in pure chemistry carried out in North America by young men and women." "Young" means born within 35 years of the awarding of the Award, which takes place at the Spring meeting of the ACS. To be eligible, a nominee "must have accomplished research of unusual merit for an individual on the threshold of her or his career. Special consideration is given to independence of thought and originality in the research...." The award was first awarded in 1931, with Linus Pauling the inaugural recipient. It is sponsored by the Alpha Chi Sigma Fraternity and the Alpha Chi Sigma Educational Foundation.
Laura Lee Kiessling is an American chemist and the Novartis Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kiessling's research focuses on elucidating and exploiting interactions on the cell surface, especially those mediated by proteins binding to carbohydrates. Multivalent protein-carbohydrate interactions play roles in cell-cell recognition and signal transduction. Understanding and manipulating these interactions provides tools to study biological processes and design therapeutic treatments. Kiessling's interdisciplinary research combines organic synthesis, polymer chemistry, structural biology, and molecular and cell biology.
Melanie Sarah Sanford is an American chemist, currently the Moses Gomberg Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Chemistry at the University of Michigan. She is a Fellow for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016. She has served as an executive editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society since 2021, having been an associate editor of the since 2014.
The William H. Nichols Medal is awarded annually for original research in chemistry. Nominees must have made a "significant and original contribution in any field of chemistry" during the five years preceding the presentation date. The medallist receives a gold medal, a bronze replica and a cash award. The award was established in 1902 by the New York Section of the American Chemical Society (ACS) through a gift from chemist and businessman William H. Nichols. It was the first award to be approved by the ACS. The medal was first awarded in 1903.
Cathleen M. Crudden is a Canadian chemist. She is a Canada Research Chair in Metal Organic Chemistry at Queen's University at Kingston. In February 2021, she took up the role of Editor-in-chief at ACS Catalysis.
Sarah Elizabeth Reisman is a Chemistry Professor at the California Institute of Technology. She received the (2013) Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award and the (2014) Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award for Organic Synthesis. Her research focuses on the total synthesis of complex natural products.
Alison Butler is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She works on bioinorganic chemistry and metallobiochemistry. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1997), the American Chemical Society (2012), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2019), and the Royal Society of Chemistry (2019). She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
Suzanne A. Blum is an American professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. Blum works on mechanistic chemistry, most recently focusing on borylation reactions and the development of single-molecule and single-particle fluorescence microscopy to study organic chemistry and catalysis. She received the American Chemical Society's Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award in 2023.
Rick L. Danheiser is an American organic chemist and is the Arthur C. Cope Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and chair of the MIT faculty. His research involves the invention of new methods for the synthesis of complex organic compounds. Danheiser is known for the Danheiser annulation and Danheiser benzannulation reactions.
John A. Gladysz, an organometallic chemist, is a Distinguished Professor and holds the Dow Chair in Chemical Invention at Texas A&M University. Professor Gladysz is a native of the Kalamazoo, Michigan area. He obtained his B.S. degree from the University of Michigan (1971) and his Ph.D. degree from Stanford University (1974). He subsequently held faculty positions at UCLA (1974-1982) and the University of Utah (1982-1998). He then accepted the Chair of Organic Chemistry at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. In 2008, he returned to North America as a distinguished professor and holder of the Dow Chair in Chemical Invention at Texas A&M University.
Richmond Sarpong is a Ghanaian-American chemist who is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Sarpong works on natural product total synthesis to better understand biological systems and allow for the development of novel therapeutics. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017, and was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020. He serves on the editorial boards of Organic Syntheses, Accounts of Chemical Research and Synlett.
Jennifer Schomaker is an American chemist who is a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research considers the total synthesis of natural and unnatural products. She was selected as an American Chemical Society Arthur C. Cope Scholar Awardee in 2021.
Kathlyn Ann Parker is a chemist known for her work on synthesis of compounds, especially organic compounds with biological roles. She is an elected fellow of the American Chemical Society and a recipient of the Garvan–Olin Medal in chemistry.
Jennifer Ann Prescher is an American chemist who is a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. Her research considers the development of bioorthogonal, bioluminescent tools for the noninvasive, real-time imaging of immunometabolism. She was recognized with the 2023 American Chemical Society Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award.
