George Whitesides -“Joseph Priestley Award Lecturer”

Whitesides PosterWoodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology,
Harvard University

Low Cost Diagnostics

Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.

* Professor Whitesides will sign copies of his book
No Small Matter: Science on the Nanoscale
Monday, November 7 at 4:00 p.m. in the Waidner-Spahr Library’s Biblio Café.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
George M. Whitesides has worked in an unusually broad range of areas, including nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, organometallic chemiWhitesidesstry, applied enzymology, self-assembly, soft lithography, microfluidics, organic surface science, and nanotechnology. His current research interests include physical and organic chemistry, materials science, biophysics, complexity and simplicity, tools for biology, technology for developing economies, and the origin of life. His laboratory at Harvard University is noted for its diversity, creativity, and productivity, and for the quality of the students it produces.

He received an A.B. degree from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology under John D. Roberts. He was a member of the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1963 to 1982. He joined the Department of Chemistry at Harvard in 1982 and served as department chairman from 1986 to 1989. From 1982 to 2004, Whitesides was the Mallinckrodt Professor of Chemistry at Harvard and is currently the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor.

Whitesides is active in numerous public service roles. He has served on advisory committees for the National Science Foundation, NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense. He has also served on the National Research Council in various capacities since 1984, including roles with the Committee on Science and Technology for Counterterrorism, Science Technology and Economic Policy, the “Gathering Storm” Committee, and the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy. Whitesides is the author of over 1,100 scientific articles and is listed as an inventor on more than 100 patents.

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Engineering. He is a foreign associate of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Indian Academy of Science, and the French Academy of Science. He is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Physics, and the American Chemical Society. Among honors, he has received the U.S. National Medal of Science in 1998, the Kyoto Prize in Materials Science and Engineering in 2003, the Welch Award in Chemistry in 2005, the Dan David Prize in Future Science in 2005, the American Chemical Society Priestley Medal in 2007, the Prince of Asturias Award in Science and Technology in 2008, the Dreyfus Prize in Chemistry in 2009, the Othmer Gold Medal (Chemical Heritage Foundation) in 2010, and the King Feisal Prize in 2011.

Joseph Priestley Lecture
The Priestley Award is presented by Dickinson College in memory of Joseph Priestley, discoverer of oxygen, to a distinguished scientist whose work has contributed to the welfare of humanity. The Priestley Award, first presented in 1952, recognizes outstanding achievement and contribution to our understanding of science and the world.