Caltech Professor Wins Chemistry Award
A54-year-old Caltech chemistry professor has won the nation’s most prestigious award in chemistry, Caltech officials announced.
Harry B. Gray will receive the American Chemical Society’s Priestley Medal at the organization’s national meeting next April in Atlanta.
The award recognizes Gray’s research contributions and services to chemistry over the last 25 years.
The award was instituted by the American Chemical Society in 1922 to commemorate the work of British-born Joseph Priestly, who discovered oxygen.
Gray is one of the nation’s leading chemists and is known for his work in inorganic chemistry and his research in chemical reactions. He is researching the possibility of designing chemical systems that can function as artificial counterparts of photosynthesis, the process by which plants gain energy from sunlight.
Since 1966, Gray has been a professor of chemistry at Caltech and will serve as director of the college’s Arnold O. Beckman Institute, which is expected to open next week.
Gray, a native of Bowling Green, Ky., received a bachelor of science in chemistry from Western Kentucky University in 1957 and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1960.
He has served on the National Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences.
This year, Gray received the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Chemists and the American Chemical Society’s Alfred Bader Award. In 1986, he won the National Medal of Science and the Pauling Medal.
