The Lemelson–MIT Program awards several prizes yearly to inventors in the United States. The largest is the Lemelson–MIT Prize which was endowed in 1994 by Jerome H. Lemelson, funded by the Lemelson Foundation, and is administered through the School of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The winner receives $500,000, making it the largest cash prize for invention in the U.S.
Zeolite is a family of several microporous, crystalline aluminosilicate materials commonly used as commercial adsorbents and catalysts. They mainly consist of silicon, aluminium, oxygen, and have the general formula Mn+
1/n(AlO
2)−
(SiO
2)
x･yH
2O where Mn+
1/n is either a metal ion or H+. These positive ions can be exchanged for others in a contacting electrolyte solution. H+
exchanged zeolites are particularly useful as solid acid catalysts.
Stephanie Louise Kwolek was a Polish-American chemist who is known for inventing Kevlar. Her career at the DuPont company spanned more than 40 years. She discovered the first of a family of synthetic fibers of exceptional strength and stiffness: poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide.
A molecular sieve is a material with pores of uniform size. These pore diameters are similar in size to small molecules, and thus large molecules cannot enter or be adsorbed, while smaller molecules can. As a mixture of molecules migrates through the stationary bed of porous, semi-solid substance referred to as a sieve, the components of the highest molecular weight leave the bed first, followed by successively smaller molecules. Some molecular sieves are used in size-exclusion chromatography, a separation technique that sorts molecules based on their size. Another important use is as a desiccant. Most of molecular sieves are aluminosilicate zeolites with Si/Al molar ratio less than 2, but there are also examples of activated charcoal and silica gel.
Robert Samuel Langer Jr. FREng is an American biotechnologist, businessman, chemical engineer, chemist, and inventor. He is one of the twelve Institute Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Harry Wesley Coover Jr. was the inventor of Eastman 910, commonly known as Super Glue.
Honeywell UOP, formerly known as UOP LLC or Universal Oil Products, is an American multi-national company developing and delivering technology to the petroleum refining, gas processing, petrochemical production, and major manufacturing industries.
Spencer Ferguson Silver III was an American chemist and inventor who specialized in adhesives. 3M credits him with having devised the adhesive that Arthur Fry used to create Post-it Notes.
Mária Telkes was a Hungarian-American biophysicist and inventor who worked on solar energy technologies.
George McClelland Whitesides 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, molecular self-assembly, soft lithography, microfabrication, microfluidics, and nanotechnology. A prolific author and patent holder who has received many awards, he received the highest Hirsch index rating of all living chemists in 2011.
Carolyn Ruth Bertozzi is an American chemist and Nobel laureate, known for her wide-ranging work spanning both chemistry and biology. She coined the term "bioorthogonal chemistry" for chemical reactions compatible with living systems. Her recent efforts include synthesis of chemical tools to study cell surface sugars called glycans and how they affect diseases such as cancer, inflammation, and viral infections like COVID-19. At Stanford University, she holds the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professorship in the School of Humanities and Sciences. Bertozzi is also an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and is the former director of the Molecular Foundry, a nanoscience research center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Allene Rosalind Jeanes was an American chemist whose pioneering work significantly impacted carbohydrate chemistry. Born in 1906 in Texas, Jeanes' notable contributions include the development of Dextran, a lifesaving blood plasma substitute used in the Korean and Vietnam wars, and Xanthan gum, a polysaccharide commonly used in the food, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical industries. Jeanes' innovations have had a lasting influence on medical treatments and everyday consumer products, highlighting her role as a key figure in applied carbohydrate science. Her achievements earned her numerous accolades, including being the first woman to receive the Distinguished Service Award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Vladimir Haensel was an American chemical engineer who invented the platforming process - a platinum catalytic process for reforming petroleum hydrocarbons into gasoline. In addition, he was influential in the creation of catalytic converters for automobiles.
Michael W. Deem is an American engineer, scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur. Deem received his B.S. in chemical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1991 and his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994. His thesis research was in statistical mechanics and disordered materials with David Chandler. He did postdoctoral research at Harvard University in physics with David R. Nelson. Deem joined the faculty at University of California, Los Angeles, in 1996 and rose to the rank of associate professor of chemical engineering. From 2002 to 2020 Deem was the John W. Cox Professor of Biochemical and Genetic Engineering and professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Deem was the founding director of the graduate program in systems, synthetic, and physical biology at Rice University, 2012-2014. From 2014 to 2017, Deem served as the chair of the bioengineering department at Rice University.
Paul Ratnasamy is an Indian catalyst scientist, INSA Srinivasa Ramanujan Research Professor and a former director of National Chemical Laboratory of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). He was honored by the Government of India, in 2001, with one of the highest Indian civilian awards of Padma Shri.
Elsa Reichmanis is an American chemist, who was the 2003 president of the American Chemical Society. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1995 for the discovery, development, and engineering leadership of new families of lithographic materials and processes that enable VLSI manufacturing. She was also inducted into the National Academy of Inventors in 2020. She is currently the Anderson Endowed Chair in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Lehigh University. She previously served on the faculty at The Georgia Institute of Technology. Reichmanis is noted for her research into microlithography, and is credited for contributing to the "development of a fundamental molecular level understanding of how chemical structure affects materials function leading to new families of lithographic materials and processes that may enable advanced VLSI manufacturing".
Gustav Egloff (1886–1955) was an American chemist nicknamed Gasoline Gus. He was Universal Oil Products' first chemist and by 1917 became their director, serving in that capacity until death. Science magazine described him as a "human catalyst".
Herman Pines was a Russian Empire-born American chemist. Born in Łódź—then part of the Russian Empire—he left his hometown as a young man as Jewish quotas and other anti-Jewish practices prevented Jewish students from attending university. After earning a degree in chemical engineering at the École Supérieure de Chimie Industrielle de Lyon in France, he worked at Universal Oil Products from 1930 to 1952. Pines also worked at Northwestern University beginning in 1941, and served from 1953–1970 as the Ipatieff Research Professor of Chemistry and director of the Ipatieff High Pressure and Catalytic Laboratory.
Paul Burgan Weisz was a Czechoslovak-born American chemist, noted for his work on solid catalysts which had a major impact on petroleum refining.
Kenneth J. Balkus Jr. is an American chemist and materials scientist. He is professor of chemistry and former department chair at The University of Texas at Dallas. He is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society and a recipient of the ACS Doherty Award. His well known work is synthesis of zeolite UTD-1, the first high-silica zeolite to contain a one-dimensional, extra-large 14-ring pore system. Other notable work include rare-earth metal organic frameworks. He is editor to Journal of Porous Materials, Springer. He is also co-founder of DB Therapeutics, a company developing cancer therapies.
