Willson wins Japan Prize, Bard and Goodenough win National Medal of Science
Grant Willson, Allen Bard, and John Goodenough
Recently, three of our faculty members have been honored with top prizes in science.
C. Grant Willson, professor of chemistry and chemical engineering, has won the Japan Prize, an international award similar to the Nobel Prize, for his development of a process that is now used to manufacture nearly all microprocessors and memory chips. He will share the 50 million yen prize (approximately $560,000) with his colleague Jean M.J. Fréchet. The Japan Prize Presentation Ceremony and Banquet, with the emperor of Japan in attendance, will take place in April.
Also this month, the White House announced that UT’s Allen Bard, chemistry professor and director of the Center for Electrochemistry, and engineering professor John Goodenough will receive the 2012 National Medal of Science. The honor is administered by the National Science Foundation and recognizes American scientists, engineers, and inventors. Bard and Goodenough will join 10 other scientists in a ceremony later this year. Only UT and Stanford contributed more than one faculty member to this year’s group of honorees.
In his 55 years teaching at UT Dr. Bard has trained generations of scientists and has pioneered scanning electron microscopy. Dr. Goodenough is widely credited with the development of the lithium-ion battery, critical to so many of the electronics embedded in our way of life.
Willson, Bard, and Goodenough are giants in their respective fields and have brought quality and prestige to a UT education. I’ve said many times that it’s our faculty that sets us apart, and I couldn’t be prouder of these three examples.
Hook ’em,
