To recognize outstanding contributions to teaching and research in Organic Chemistry
The award will be presented no more than biennially during the fall national meeting of the American Chemical Society. The Award consists of a $1,500 cash prize. The Leete and Gassman Awards are the only two awards selected by the Executive Committee of the Organic Division.
The award is named in honor of Edward Leete who, through his contributions to science and education, fostered an appreciation and love for organic chemistry. The award was endowed by contributions from Professor Leete’s students and colleagues.
Nominees must be members of the Organic Division of the American Chemical Society who have made outstanding contributions to both teaching and research. Teaching should be considered in the broadest sense, including of professional chemists, the dissemination of information about chemistry to prospective chemists, to members of the profession, to students in other areas and to the general public. A nominee must also have accomplished outstanding creative work in any area of organic chemistry. Nominations should emphasize both the nominee’s teaching and research contributions.
All text should be at least 11 pt font. Nominations should be submitted as a single PDF file (Name the PDF file with candidate’s name, for example: JessicaSmith-LeeteNomination.pdf)via the online Leete Award Nomination Form . Nominations due by Friday May 5th, 2023.
Edward Leete was born on April 18, 1928 in Leeds, England. In 1948, he received the B.Sc. degree from the University of Leeds where he also completed the Ph.D. in 1950 with William Bradley in the organic chemistry of colors and dyestuffs. He was awarded a two-year Goldsmiths Company Traveling Fellowship, which he spent with the well-known French-Canadian alkaloid chemist, Leo Marion and with whom he continued until 1954 as a NRC Canada Postdoctoral Fellow in Ottawa. He began his academic career at UCLA as instructor, then assistant professor, and moved to the University of Minnesota in 1958 where he became full professor in 1963. Among his awards, are the first Phytochemistry Prize and Medal (1990) and University of Minnesota Distinguished Teaching Award (1976).
Beginning in his postdoctoral work at NRC, research on alkaloids became his career choice and passion which he followed with a consistent focus to answer the encompassing question: how do plants take the available amino acids and make such complex and variable structures as the alkaloids? He pursued the field of “alkaloid biogenesis” with all methods available at that time: both radioactive and non-radioactive tracer analysis and NMR spectroscopy. His work was internationally recognized and appeared in some 250 publications.
Eddie, as he was affectionately known to many, loved to teach and to work in the laboratory. His classes were very large and frequently scheduled at 8 am by his choice so that he would have the rest of the day in the lab. His lecture demonstrations are memorable: one fire-blowing demonstration at a chemistry banquet assured that the department was not invited to return next year. He was a juvenile diabetic, which he compensated by being an accomplished marathon runner. He was regularly seen jogging to work bearing a backpack.
Eddie Leete had the curiosity and naiveté of an outstanding scientist; spunky to him, every observation and discovery was a new delight. He radiated energy and optimism and was courageous to the end, which came on February 8, 1992 when he succumbed to brain cancer (taken in part from the eulogy by Wayland E. Nolan and the obituary published in Phytochemistry. Phytochemistry, 1992 , 31, 3303-5)
For More Information see:
The University of Minnesota’s Page on Ed Leete
Vitae
Eulogy by Wayland E. Noland
Established in 1995, the Leete Award recognizes outstanding contributions to teaching and research in Organic Chemistry. The award honors Edward Leete of the University of Minnesota, who, through his contributions to science and education, fostered an appreciation and love for organic chemistry. The award consists of a plaque and a cash award and will be formally presented at the Fall ACS National Meeting.
Marisa Kozlowski (the 2023 Awardee)
The ACS Division of Organic Chemistry is pleased to announce that Marisa Kozlowski is the 2023 Leete Award winner. The award honors Edward Leete of the University of Minnesota, who, through his contributions to science and education, fostered an appreciation and love for organic chemistry. The award consists of a plaque and a cash award and will be formally presented at the ACS National Meeting.
Prof. Kozlowski received an A.B. in Chemistry from Cornell University and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley for work on the rational design of enzyme inhibitors under the direction of Paul Bartlett. After studying asymmetric catalysis in the laboratories of David A. Evans at Harvard University as a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow, she joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and currently holds the rank of Professor of Chemistry.
The major focus of Professor Kozlowski’s research is the development of new catalytic methods for efficient organic synthesis using computation and high throughput screening. Professor Kozlowski’s contributions have been recognized by a DuPont Young Investigator Award, an NSF CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the Kahn Award for Distinguished Teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, an American Cancer Society Beginning Research Scholar Award, the Philadelphia Organic Chemists’ Club Award in 2010, election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012, the Philadelphia ACS Section Award in 2012, election as an American Chemical Society Fellow in 2013, and the ACS Cope Scholar Award in 2022. Prof. Kozlowski has authored over 170 independent publications. She has also served in several leadership roles for the Organic Division of the American Chemical Society and on numerous study sections including a term as Chair of the American Cancer Society CDD Study Section. She is currently Editor-In-Chief of Organic Letters.
Professor Kozlowski is committed to education on several fronts. First, Kozlowski coauthored with Professor Patrick Walsh the book “Fundamentals of Asymmetric Catalysis”, available from University Science Books. In addition, she created an archive of articles for graduate level chemists “Experimental Techniques to Study Organic Chemistry Mechanisms” on her website. This has become the authoritative resource for those wanting to dive deeper into how reactions work. Finally, as a result of the COVID 19 pandemic, she worked to implement remote labs and recently published these studies in the Journal of Chemical Education. For these collective efforts, Professor Kozlowski was awarded the Charles Ludwig Distinguished Teaching Award in 2020 and the Dennis DeTurck Award for Innovation in Teaching in 2021.
Richmond Sarpong (the 2021 Awardee)
The ACS Division of Organic Chemistry is pleased to announce that the 2021 Leete Award has been bestowed upon Professor Richmond Sarpong at the University of California, Berkeley.
Established in 1995, the Leete Award recognizes outstanding contributions to teaching and research in Organic Chemistry. The award honors Edward Leete of the University of Minnesota, who, through his contributions to science and education, fostered an appreciation and love for organic chemistry. The award consists of a plaque and a cash award and will be formally presented at the ACS National Meeting in San Diego, in March 2022.
Richmond Sarpong received his BS in chemistry from Macalester College in St. Paul, MN where he performed undergraduate research with Prof. Rebecca C. Hoye. He received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry in May 2001 from Princeton University, working with Prof. Martin F. Semmelhack, then he joined Caltech as an UNCF- Pfizer Postdoctoral Fellow with Prof. Brian Stoltz. In 2004, Sarpong joined the faculty at UC Berkeley, where he is now a full professor and serves as Executive Associate Dean in the College of Chemistry.
Sarpong’s independent research career is defined by creativity and productivity in the field of total synthesis of alkaloids and diterpenoids, as well as methodology development. Recently, he launched a new direction of his research program focusing on C–C bond cleavage/functionalization reactions. These non-intuitive transformations are meant to reduce structural complexity, but add synthetic value, since the resulting molecules cannot be easily prepared by other approaches. Sarpong’s research group has published over 110 papers and he has received numerous awards in recognition of his research. He and his coworkers have written several reviews that go beyond the usual collection of facts and seek to teach the community about complex topics in organic synthesis.
Richmond Sarpong has also been passionate about teaching and mentoring since early-on in his career. As a postdoc, he worked tirelessly with his graduate student colleagues and served as a mentor to them. His golden touch has continued at Berkeley with many of his students and mentees moving on to highly productive and distinguished careers of their own in academia and industry. He enjoys teaching and was the recipient of the 2009 UC Berkeley Department of Chemistry teaching award and the 2016 Noyce Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in the Physical Sciences at Berkeley. If you have not had the pleasure of listening to one of Richmond’s lectures, you can watch a TEDxBerkeley talk that he gave a few years ago, which also describes his remarkable journey from Africa to the US.
Professor Neil Garg received his BS degree from New York University and his PhD from Cal Tech, where he worked with Brian Stoltz in the field of total synthesis. Following a NIH postdoctoral fellowship at UC Irvine with Larry Overman, Garg joined the faculty of UCLA in 2007.
Garg’s independent research encompasses numerous aspects of synthetic organic chemistry. His creative work in synthetic methodology has included the synthesis and applications of strained heterocycles such as indolynes, pyridynes, and azacyclic allenes, which provide access to complex alkaloids and medicinally relevant substances. A notable example appears in the Garg lab’s total syntheses of welwitindolinone alkaloids, which are among the best-known of syntheses of over 20 intricate natural product syntheses that the group has published. More recently, Garg has published groundbreaking studies on nickel-catalyzed reactions of amides, belying the conventional view of amides as unreactive functionalities. Recognition for his research efforts has included receipt of the EJ Corey and Cope Scholar Awards from the American Chemical Society. He was selected as a Fellow of both the American Chemical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2018.
Throughout his career, Neil Garg has demonstrated a profound commitment to education. He and his family live in the UCLA dormitories as part of the UCLA Faculty-in-Residence Program. With regard to organic chemistry teaching, nominator Professor Ken Houk states that Garg “has an uncanny knack for taking one of the most feared and commonly disliked classes – organic chemistry – and making it fun and accessible to young people, despite making his course quite challenging.” In addition to excellence in teaching, Garg has produced teaching resources that have been widely adopted among the chemistry community and the public. These include learnbacon.com, an independent learning tutorial for organic chemistry students, qrchem.net, the Backside Attack smartphone application, and a chemistry coloring book for children. His efforts in education have been recognized through many awards, including being named California’s Professor of the Year in 2015 by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Education, and his receipt of the 2018 Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching, which is the largest university teaching prize anywhere in the world.
Jeffrey Aubé (The 2017 Awardee)
Jeffrey Aubé received his BS from the University of Miami, where he did undergraduate research with Professor Robert Gawley. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1984 from Duke University, working with Professor Steven Baldwin, and was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Yale University with Professor Samuel Danishefsky. From 1986 until 2015, he held a faculty position in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Kansas. In 2015, he retired from KU and moved to the University of North Carolina, where he is an Eshelman Distinguished Professor in the Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry. In addition to holding a joint appointment in the Department of Chemistry, Aubé is a member of the Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery and the Lineberger Cancer Center.
Aubé’s research interests lie in the chemistry of heterocyclic compounds and their applications to problems in medicinal organic chemistry. One of his group’s signature accomplishments was the discovery, with Greg Milligan, of the intramolecular Schmidt reaction. Some current interests in bioorganic chemistry include collaborations in opioid pharmacology (with Laura Bohn), steroid biosynthesis inhibitors (with Emily Scott), and in the discovery of anti-tuberculosis agents (with Carl Nathan).
Professor Aubé enjoyed a life-long collaboration with his undergraduate mentor, Bob Gawley, which included co-authorship of the graduate text “Principles of Asymmetric Synthesis”, currently in its second edition and, with Professor Oliver Reiser of the University of Regensburg, the development of a trans-Atlantic dual undergraduate degree program. The “Atlantis” program was jointly funded by the US Department of Education and the European Commission’s Directorate General for Education and Culture and mobilized undergraduate students to study at KU, the Universities of Arkansas and Regensburg, and Dublin City University. This program was recognized by the award of the Nikolai N. Khaladjan International Award for Innovation in Higher Education in 2008. Aubé received several teaching awards at KU, including the university-wide HOPE Award and the Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence at KU. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Chemical Society.
Jeffrey Moore (The 2015 Awardee)
Jeffrey Moore received his B.S. in chemistry (1984) and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering with Samuel Stupp (1989), both from the University of Illinois. He then went to Caltech as an NSF postdoctoral fellow working with Robert Grubbs. In 1990, he joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and then in 1993 returned to UIUC where he is currently the Murchison-Mallory Chair in the Department of Chemistry. He has published over 300 articles covering topics from technology in the classroom to self-healing polymers, mechanoresponsive materials and shape-persistent macrocycles. Jeff’s excellence in scientific research and teaching are recognized with several awards. He received the UIUC Campus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching and has been recognized as a “Faculty Ranked Excellent by their Students.” In 2014, he was selected as an HHMI Professor. Jeff is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Chemical Society.
Professor Moore’s approach to teaching and research embody the qualities of the Award namesake, Edward Leete. His work has benefited hugely from the synergy between teaching and research. For example, the inspiration for Jeff’s mechanophore concept came from re-learning pericyclic reactions for a sophomore organic course directly leading to the idea that mechanical force may be able to bias reaction pathways. This endeavor ultimately found itself on the cover of “Nature.” When asked for comments, Jeff responded “Thousands of students pass through our organic chemistry classrooms each year. For many, ours may be their last formal course in chemistry. We shouldn’t miss the opportunity to send them away with an amazing appreciation about how our subject will impact their lives.”
To recognize outstanding service to the organic chemistry community.
The award consists of $1,500 and a cut crystal plaque. The award will be presented no more than biennially at the Fall executive committee dinner in even-numbered years. Travel expenses to attend the national meeting will also be provided.
The award was established in 1994 with financial help from the Bayer Corporation’s Pharmaceutical Division, located in West Haven, CT, and Bayer’s Polymer and Materials Divisions, located in Pittsburgh, PA. In 2007, The award was endowed by the Midwest Pharmaceutical Process Chemistry Consortium with a supporting contribution from the Division of Organic Chemistry. The winner of this award and of the Leete Award are the only two awards actually selected by the Organic Division.
Nominees must be long-standing members of the Organic Division of the American Chemical Society who through their contributions to the organic chemical community in the United States have significantly enhanced the welfare of its members. Contributions to the American Chemical Society and/or the Organic Chemistry Division, including significant accomplishments in the management and function of the ACS that impact the environment of organic chemistry, leadership and innovation in the Division, and conspicuous service on behalf of organic chemists are appropriate considerations.
Nominations should emphasize the candidate’s service contributions. The nomination letter (2 pages max, with minimum font size 11pt), seconding letters (up to five, 1 page each, with minimum font size 11pt), and the candidate’s C.V. should be submitted as a single PDF file via the online form (please name the PDF file with the candidate’s name (for example: JohnSmith-GassmanNomination.pdf).
Deadline: The due date for the 2024 award nominations is April 1, 2024.
Paul Gassman was born June 22, 1935 in Alden, New York, son of Joseph Martin Jasmine and Florence Marie Rautenstrauch Gassman, of German Swiss parentage. In 1957, he graduated with a B.S. degree from Canisius College in Buffalo, New York. He received his Ph.D. in 1960 from Cornell University, where he worked with Prof. Jerrold Meinwald, and continued as a postdoctoral fellow during 1960 before beginning an appointment as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Ohio State University, moving to theUniversity of Minnesota as a Professor in 1974. He served the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry as a member of the Executive Committee (1976-88), Chairman-elect (1980), Chairman (1981), and Councilor (1983-1988). He also served as the ACS President for 1990.
Paul Gassman’s research was centered in the area of organic reaction mechanisms, and focused on mechanisms of catalysis (including hydrocarbon metathesis), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, chemistry of highly strained molecules, neighboring group participation in carbocation chemistry, cycloaddition reactions, enzyme mechanisms, organoelectro-chemistry, carbanion chemistry, synthesis of heterocyclic molecules, oxidation of hydrocarbons, nitrenium ion chemistry, and electron-transfer reactions. The work resulted in over 300 publications in scientific journals, 32 patents, and 11 books in which he is listed as an editor, and provided training for 72 Ph.D. and 13 M.S. students, as well as dozens of postdoctoral fellows and a number of undergraduate researchers. At the age 57, Paul Gassman was at home on the evening of April 17, 1993 when he suffered a torn aorta. The following day he underwent emergency open-heart surgery, but suffered irreversible brain damage and never regained consciousness. He died on April 21, 1993. (Taken in part from the University of Minnesota’s Senate Minutes.)
Professor Lisa McElwee-White is the Colonel Allen R. and Margaret G. Crow Professor of Chemistry at the University of Florida. She received her BS in chemistry from the University of Kansas in 1979 and a PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 1983 under the direction of Dennis Dougherty. She then completed postdoctoral studies with James Collman at Stanford University and began her independent career there in 1985. In 1993, she moved to the University of Florida (UF) as an associate professor and was promoted to full professor in 1997. While at UF, she served as Associate Dean for Administrative Affairs, the Director of the Beckman Scholars program, and is currently the Chair of the Chemistry Department.
The Paul G. Gassman Award Distinguished Service Award has been bestowed upon Professor McElwee-White for her many significant contributions to the Division of Organic Chemistry (DOC) and the organic chemistry community through several prominent elected and appointed roles. For example, as a member of the DOC’s Executive Committee, she served as national Program Chair, Member-at-Large, and Chair. From 2006 to 2024 she, along with Professor Huw Davies, organized the annual Academic Young Investigators symposia, which provides a stage for assistant professors to showcase their work. Professor McElwee-White has also served as a member of several editorial advisory boards for prominent journals including, the Journal of Organic Chemistry, Organometallics, and ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, as well as the Committee of Visitors for the NSF Chemistry Division and myriad ACS committees. Professor McElwee-White’s research focuses on applying organometallic chemistry to materials deposition, including chemical vapor and focused electron- and ion beam-induced depositions. A particular focus of her work is mechanism-based design of single source precursors for these materials.
Professor McElwee-White is a Fellow of both the American Chemical Society and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. Her awards include the ACS’s Francis P. Garvin- John M. Olin Medal, and the Charles H. Herty Medal (Georgia Section ACS), the Florida Award (Florida Section ACS) and the Charles H. Stone Award (Carolina-Piedmont Section ACS).
Professor P. Andrew Evans is the Alfred R. Bader Chair of Organic Chemistry and a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Organic and Organometallic Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. He is also a Changjiang Scholar at Central South University in Changsha, Hunan, P. R. China. He received a B.Sc. with honors in Applied Chemistry at Newcastle Polytechnic in 1987 and a Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge in 1991 under the supervision of Andrew B. Holmes, FRS. He then completed postdoctoral studies with Philip D. Magnus, FRS, at the University of Texas at Austin as a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow. In 1993, he initiated his independent career at the University of Delaware, where he was promoted through the ranks to Professor in 2000. He then moved to Indiana University in 2001 and the University of Liverpool in 2006, where he was the Heath Harrison Chair of Organic Chemistry before starting his current position in July 2012.
The Paul G. Gassman Distinguished Service Award has been bestowed upon Professor Evans for his many significant contributions to the Division of Organic Chemistry (DOC) and the organic chemistry community through several prominent elected and appointed roles. For example, as a member of the Division’s Executive Committee, he served as Member-at-Large, Councilor, and Chair. He also organized the successful 2007 National Organic Chemistry Symposium at Duke University. In 2010, with Gary Molander, he initiated the highly acclaimed Graduate Research Symposium, which provides rising fifth-year graduate students an opportunity to interact with leaders from academia, industry, various funding agencies, and publishers. It is now regarded as one of the most innovative and important programs provided by the Division, and it has recently been recognized with an ACS ChemLuminary Award. Professor Evans has also served as a member of several editorial boards for prominent journals and is currently an Associate Editor for the Thieme journal, Synthesis. In addition, he is the current Editor-in-Chief and President of Organic Reactions, a preeminent source of authoritative and comprehensive reviews that also supports several philanthropic initiatives through the Division.
Professor Evans’ research focuses on developing new synthetic transformations that permit the expeditious synthesis of functional molecules. A unique and striking feature of this research program is the ability to access new chemical reactivity through mechanistic studies, which provides the insight to combine these reactions in sophisticated multi-component processes for the stereoselective construction of complex molecular systems. Professor Evans is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society and has received numerous awards for his contributions to the field. Recent awards include the Harry and Carol Mosher Award, the Changjiang Scholar Award, an ACS Cope Scholar Award, and the RSC Pedler Award. In addition, several prominent pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, Novartis, GlaxoWellcome, Eli Lilly, and AstraZeneca, have also recognized his research work through their award programs.
Pat Confalone received his BS degree from MIT and his PhD from Harvard University where he worked with Professor R.B. Woodward. After ten years at Hoffmann-La Roche, Dr. Confalone joined Dupont Life Sciences where his Bioorganic Chemistry group developed the fluorescent dye-labeled reagents that were used in automated DNA sequencing, eventually employed in the human genome project. With DuPont Pharmaceuticals, Dr. Confalone recruited a world class Medicinal Chemistry department that discovered CozaarTM, a major anti-hypertensive based on angiotensin II antagonism. After 22 years in Discovery Research, he moved into pre-clinical development and built a highly successful Chemical Process R&D organization that carried out the chemical development of CozaarTM and SustivaTM, a highly successful NNRTI used to treat AIDS. For the last 7 years of his industrial career he was the Vice President for R&D at DuPont Crop Protection. His organization twice received Agrow Magazine’s award for best R&D pipeline in the Crop Protection Industry. He has published over 130 publications and has obtained 40 patents. He has held adjunct professorships at the University of Colorado, Rutgers University and Drew University.
Dr. Confalone has been an exemplary role model for industrial chemists with regards to his service to the ACS and the greater community of organic chemistry. He has served the Division of Organic Chemistry in many capacities as a member of the Executive Committee including as Chair. He has been a tireless supporter of funding for organic chemistry in academic labs through congressional lobbying for federal support of R&D funding for the NIH, NSF, DOD and DOE. As Chairman of the Board of Directors for the ACS, Dr. Confalone represented organic chemistry at the highest level of the society. Notably, Dr. Confalone is a co-founder of the French-American Chemical Society where organic chemists from France and America have built lasting friendships and collaborations over the course of the last 30 years. Pat has supported this project throughout its existence and was the chair of the FACS-IV conference. He is also a past chair of the Natural Products Gordon Research Conference.
Dr. Confalone is an ACS Fellow and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has received many awards and honors, including the Alpha Chi Sigma award, Harvard Graduate Society Prize, Samuel M. McElvain Industrial Speaker (1982), Robert A. Welch Foundation Lecturer (1988-1989), Esther Humphrey Lecturer (1990), Philadelphia Organic Chemistry Club Industrial Award (2005) and the Earle B. Barnes Award for Leadership in Chemical Research Management (2021).
Cynthia A. Maryanoff received her B.S. degree in chemistry from Drexel University and her Ph.D. degree from Princeton University. After conducting postdoctoral work at Princeton, she joined the Medicinal Chemistry Department at Smith, Kline & French in Philadelphia. In 1981, she moved to Johnson & Johnson (J&J), and advanced to the highest scientific position in the company, Distinguished Research Fellow, retiring in 2013 after 32 years of service. At J&J her work involved rapidly moving new molecular entities (NMEs) from small-scale to large-scale chemical synthesis, the development of formulations and analytical methods, thereby advancing NMEs to first-in-human and proof-of-principle studies in record time relative to industry standards. She is now affiliated with the Baruch S. Blumberg Institute as Foundation Distinguished Professor and the Pennsylvania Drug Discovery Institute as Professor of Drug Delivery.
Cyndie is very active in the scientific community both locally and nationally, especially within the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry where she currently serves on the Executive Committee (1988-present). As a member of the Organic Division’ s executive committee she served as a Councilor or Alternate Councilor for many years, organized and chaired over 30 award symposia, and served as the first female Chair. For the past 30 years, Cyndie chaired the Division’s Award Committee, where she initiated and obtained funding to support the Travel Award program to help outstanding students and faculty at undergraduate institutions attend ACS National Meetings and National Organic Symposia. This program has supported more than a thousand students and faculty over the last 30 years. Cyndie also created the Organic Division’s Technical Achievement Award (TAOC), an annual award symposium that recognizes outstanding contributions to organic chemistry by industrial or government chemists at the non-Ph.D. level. The Travel Award and TAOC Award programs have earned ACS ChemLuminary Awards for the Division. Additionally, Cyndie currently serves the ACS on the ACS Governing Board of Publishing and the International Affairs Committee.
Cyndie is an inaugural ACS Fellow and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has received numerous national, local, and internal corporate awards that encompass both scientific and managerial achievements, most notably: The Perkin Medal (2015); The ACS Earle B. Barnes Award for Leadership in Chemical Research Management; The ACS Garvan–Olin Medal; the ACS Henry F. Whalen, Jr. Award for Business Development. Cyndie has served for many years as a member of the Drexel University Advisory Council for the College of Arts and Sciences.
Professor Molander received his B.S. degree in chemistry from Iowa State University and his Ph.D. from Purdue University. After a postdoctoral stint at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he began his independent career as an assistant professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, rising through the ranks to professor before moving to the University of Pennsylvania.
Professor Molander has a long history of service to the organic community in elected and appointed positions, both at the local and national levels. He has served the Organic Division for over 15 years as member of the Executive Committee, including as Executive Officer of the 37th National Organic Symposium, Secretary-Treasurer, and Chair of the Division. One of the most important initiatives he established, in collaboration with Andrew Evans, is the Division’ s Graduate Research Symposium. This symposium was started in order to reach young DOC members and is now in its 6th year. It is considered one of the Division’ s most innovative programs, and was recognized by the ACS with a ChemLuminary Award. Locally, he served as Chair of the Philadelphia Section of the ACS and the Philadelphia Organic Chemists Club. He has been on many editorial advisory boards and is currently serving as an Associate Editor of Organic Letters, co-Editor-in-Chief of Comprehensive Organic Synthesis II, and the Editorial Advisory Board of Science of Synthesis.
Professor Molander’ s research interests are in the development of new synthetic methods for organic synthesis, particularly in the invention of transition metal-catalyzed protocols for the construction of carbon-carbon bonds. Professor Molander is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society and has received numerous honors for his research and teaching, including an Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, a Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship, the Philadelphia Section Award, and The American Chemical Society Herbert C. Brown Award for Creative Research in Synthetic Methods.
Professor Smith received his early education at Bucknell University, where in 1966 he earned Bucknell University’s first combined four-year B.S.-M.S. degree in Chemistry. After a year in medical school (University of Pennsylvania), he earned his Ph.D. degree (University of Pennsylvania, 1972) and completed a year as a Research Associate at Rockefeller University. In 1973, he joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania; currently, he is the Rhodes-Thompson Professor of Chemistry. He is a Member of the Monell Chemical Senses Center, and from 1976-2000, he was a Member of the Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter (LRSM). In 2001, he was appointed as an Honorary Member at the Kitasato Institute, where he has served as Visiting Director.
In a timeframe spanning over 30 years, Amos has served the organic community through his active participation in the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry and various editorial advisory boards and study sections and beginning in 2012, the ACS governing board for publishing. For the DOC he began volunteering in the 1980′ s, assuming different roles on the Executive Committee such as chairing the National Organic Symposium at Montana State University in 1993, and chairing the Executive Committee in 1996. Shortly thereafter, Professor Smith assumed the role of Founding Editor-in-Chief for Organic Letters, a new ACS journal for chemical communications in organic chemistry. Under Professor Smith’s guidance Organic Letters has experienced extraordinary worldwide success and rapidly became a premiere journal for publications in the field.
Smith’s research interests encompass three diverse areas: natural product synthesis, bioorganic chemistry and materials science. To date more than 85 architecturally complex natural products have been prepared in his Laboratory. In addition, Smith, in collaboration with Ralph Hirschmann, has achieved the design and synthesis of non-peptide peptidomimetics of neuropeptideic hormone/transmitters and protease enzyme inhibitors and, also with Stephen Benkovic (Penn State), haptens for the production of catalytic antibodies capable of peptide bond formation. At Monell, in collaboration with Peter Jurs (Penn State), he pioneered the use of computerized pattern recognition techniques for the analysis of primate chemical communication. Collaborative programs at the LRSM include the chemistry and physics of novel liquid crystals and the fullerenes. More recent studies with the late Professor Robin Hochstrasser involve the development of ultrafast photochemical triggers to explore peptide/protein folding.
Amos has been recognized for his contributions to our science by numerous national and international awards including the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (1991), the ACS Ernest Guenther Award (1993), the ACS Award for Creativity in Organic Chemistry (1997), the Centenary Medal, Royal Society of Chemistry, London, (2002), the Yamada Prize (Tokyo, Japan) (2003), the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon from the Government of Japan (2004), RSC Simonsen Medal (2008), Inaugural Fellow, American Chemical Society (2009), D.Sc. (honoris causa), Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland (2009) and the William H. Nichols Award from the New York Section of the ACS (2014)
Professor Davis received his B.S. degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1962 having completed undergraduate research studies with Peter S. Wharton and completed his Ph.D. work with Donald C. Dittmer at Syracuse University in 1966. After completing Post-doctoral studies at the University of Texas with Michael J.S. Dewar he began his academic career at Drexel University in 1968. In 1995 he moved to Temple University as Professor of Chemistry and became the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Chemistry in 2009. Professor Davis has been advancing the interests of the members of the Division of Organic Chemistry as a member of the Executive Committee for over twenty four years. Frank served as the first National Program Chair and was instrumental in the development of the first scheduling software for ACS meetings. In 2005 he pioneered and developed the function of Regional Meeting Liaison to encourage organic programming at regional meetings, a position he still holds today. He has also served as Division Chair, Counselor, and on various committees, advisory boards, study sections and editorial boards. Professor Davis is well known for his work in the design and application of sulfinimines (N-sulfinyl imines) to the asymmetric synthesis of amines. Two of these reagents bear his name, the Davis oxaziridine and the Davis sulfinimine. He is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry. He has received numerous awards including the Cope Scholar Award, the Philadelphia John Scott Award, and a fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
To recognize outstanding achievement in the field of organic chemistry, the significance of which has become apparent within the five years preceding the year in which the award will be considered.
The award consists of $25,000, a medallion with a presentation box, and a certificate. Reasonable travel expenses to the spring national meeting at which the award will be presented and to the fall national meeting to deliver an award address will be reimbursed. The medallion will be presented during the award address.
An unrestricted grant-in-aid of $150,000 for research in organic chemistry, under the direction of the recipient, designated as an Arthur C. Cope Fund Grant, will be made to any university or nonprofit institution selected by the recipient. A recipient may choose to assign the Arthur C. Cope Fund Grant to an institution for use by others for research or education in organic chemistry.
In 1972 the ACS Board of Directors accepted responsibility for administering an award created under the terms of the will of Arthur C. Cope.
The award will be granted without regard to age or nationality for outstanding achievement in the field of organic chemistry. See the ACS Page on the Cope Award for nomination procedures.
Arthur Clay Cope,was born on June 27, 1909 in Indiana. In 1929 he received the bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Butler University in Indianapolis, then, with the support of a teaching assistantship, moved to the University of Wisconsin for graduate work. His thesis advisor at Wisconsin was S. M. McElvain, whose research program included the synthesis of organic compounds with possible pharmaceutical uses-especially local anesthetics and barbiturates. Cope’s thesis work was completed in 1932. In 1933, he moved to Harvard to work with E. P. Kohler. In 1934, Cope accepted his first academic position, associate in chemistry at Bryn Mawr College. After spending a summer at the University of Illinois as an assistant professor in 1935, he was promoted to the same position at Bryn Mawr and to associate professor in 1938. While at Bryn Mawr, Cope spent some time trying to determine the structure of Grignard reagents by precipitation procedures. Cope eventually directed his attention to developing new synthetic reactions for substituted barbiturates and novel aminoalcohol local anesthetics. More important for organic chemistry as a whole was his discovery of a facile thermal rearrangement from one carbon to another in a three-carbon system of an allyl group. In 1939, Cope’s career was given a boost through his election as secretary of the Organic Division of the American Chemical Society. In 1941 he moved to Columbia University as associate professor, and when World War II started, joined the Office of Scientific Research and Development as technical aide and section chief of Division 9 of the National Research Council. He was responsible for projects ranging from chemical warfare agents and insect repellents to antimalarial drugs and, in 1946, received the Certificate of Merit for his contributions to the war effort. In 1945 he moved to MIT to head the Department of Chemistry, where he began to work on the synthesis of cyclooctatetraene which lead to various project directions including whole new areas of physical organic endeavor. One significant example is “valence tautomerism,” where a compound isomerizes reversibly without intervention of external agents (except heat) by processes in which bonds are broken and made, usually simultaneously. What Cope and his coworkers discovered was the change of 1,3,5 cyclooctatriene into bicyclo[4.2.0]-2,4-octadiene. One of the last important achievements of Cope’s research program was his ingenious resolution of the optical isomers of trans-cyclooctene and trans-cyclononene.
After the war, Cope began to expand his service to chemistry on the national scene. In 1945, he was appointed to the editorial board of Organic Syntheses and he was the Organic Reactions’ editor-in-chief from 1960 to 1966. He served the American Chemical Society with great distinction: chairman of the Division of Organic Chemistry in 1946; councillor (1950-1951); president of ACS (1961); and chairman of the Board (1959-1960, 1962-1966). Among other accomplishments as an American Chemical Society leader, Arthur Cope had much to do with averting collapse of Chemical Abstracts around 1960, a time when chemical abstracting services were failing. He died suddenly on June 4, 1966 at the age of fifty-six in Washington, D.C., where he had gone for American Chemical Society and National Academy of Sciences business.
For More Information see
The ACS Page on the Cope Award
Biography by Roberts and Sheenan, National Academy of Sciences
25 Years of the Cope Award (C&EN, 1999, 77, 33–37)
Arthur C. Cope on Wikipedia
Arthur C. Cope Award on Wikipedia
The purpose of the Technical Achievements in Organic Chemistry Program is to recognize outstanding contributions to the field of organic chemistry from accomplished, professional chemists holding a bachelor’s or master’s degree or equivalent. The program has split into these two programs to recognize more individuals:
Awardees are selected by the Early and Mid Career TAOC Awards Committee from a pool of candidates nominated by their respective employers, and are approved by the Executive Committee of the Division of Organic Chemistry. Nominations are accepted through the online Early Career or Mid Career TAOC Nomination Form and must include the following materials: (a) a letter containing the address of the nominator and information written on company letterhead of nomination that presents evidence that illustrates the scientist’s promise, creativity, independence and productivity. (b) the nominee’s CV (including work address and email) that includes a description of their educational background and experience, and publication and patent record and (c) any other information that documents the special achievements and/or contributions made by the nominee (i.e. mentorship, leadership). Seconding letters and copies of selected publications will be considered but are not necessary.
There are two events associated with the Early Career /Mid Career TAOC Awards. There is a dinner for the awardees, typically on Sunday evening of the ACS Fall National Meeting in combination with the Early and Mid-Career Investigator Awardees. There is a symposium typically on Wednesday of the ACS Fall National Meeting.
Awardees presents a 30 minute scientific talk at the Fall ACS meeting that contains a substantial amount of the scientist’s own work (time period is flexible depending on number of awardees) at the ACS National Fall Meeting. As an awards symposium, under ACS bylaws there is no question and answer period.
We encourage nominators to select candidates who are both excellent scientists and good communicators. To nominate a candidate for the Early or Mid Career TAOC Award you would need to complete the appropriate online nomination form-due January 21, 2025. Nominators must be members or affiliates of the ACS Organic Division. The form requires a letter describing the nominee’s contributions and the nominee’s curriculum vitae. Additional letters and supporting documents are most welcome, but not essential. For EC-TAOC nominees must be no more than 10 years from graduating (bachelor’s or master’s) for MC-TAOC nominees must be more than 10 years from graduating (bachelor’s or master’s) and are a current researcher in a non-academic setting (e.g. industry, government or non-profit laboratory). Nominations from women and minorities who are typically under-represented in chemistry are especially encouraged.
Questions may be directed to Elizabeth Swift and Vanessa Marx.
Nominations are to be submitted as a single PDF file (named using the format: Nominee’sLast Name_First Name_TAOC.pdf i.e. Smith_Jane_TAOC.pdf) through these online forms:
Early Career-TAOC
Mid Career-TAOC
Your PDF file should have the following parts in the following order:
- Nomination Letter on Company Letterhead
- Nominee’s CV
- Supplementary Information (optional)
The TAOC was initiated in 1992, and with the 2024 Awardees, there have been a total of 437 awards. A list of awardees and their affliations can be found HERE.
To recognize and encourage outstanding contributions to research in organic chemistry defined in its broadest sense.
The award consists of a medallion, a certificate, and $25,000. The award is presented biennially in odd-numbered years. The recipient delivers a lecture at the Biennial National Organic Chemistry Symposium (NOS) of the American Chemical Society National Meeting and Symposium. The travel expenses to the Symposium are covered
The award was established in 1959 by Organic Syntheses, Inc. and Organic Reactions, Inc., the Division of Organic Chemistry, and the American Chemical Society. The first award was made in 1959.
The award is currently funded by Organic Syntheses, Inc. and Organic Reactions® along with Wiley (which provides the funds for the medal and a portion of the award dinner), and the Organic Division (which organizes the award address at NOS). Sponsorship entails covering the $25,000 award and significant overhead costs to administer the award.
The award is granted to an individual without regard to nationality for outstanding contributions to research in organic chemistry defined in its broadest sense.
Roger Adams was born in Boston on January 2, 1889. He graduated from Harvard with an A.B. in 1908 with a major in chemistry. Adams went on to pursue his Ph.D. at Radcliffe where he initially worked with H. A. Torrey whose premature death in 1910 caused Adams to seek help from several other faculty to complete his thesis in 1912. He subsequently was awarded a traveling fellowship which allowed him to move to Berlin to work with Fisher and Diels then with Willstãtter. Adams returned to Harvard in 1913 as research assistant to C. L. Jackson and shortly undertook the duties of instructor in chemistry. In 1916, Adams joined the University of Illinois Chemistry Department as an assistant professor. At Illinois, Adams pursued research on the preparation of local anesthetics. Adams was drawn into research for the army in 1917 and spent the last few months of 1918 in uniform as a major. After the World War, Adams focused on catalytic hydrogenation (Adams catalyst-discovered by an excellent example of serendipity), local anesthetics, synthesis of naturally occurring compounds, and the stereochemistry of compounds with restricted rotation and of deuterium compounds.
His contributions to the foundation of how graduate chemistry are carried out is noteworthy. One example, of his efforts includes that, in 1954, he designed the program for the Sloan Foundation that gives unrestricted grants to promising young professors. Adams also helped start the Organic Syntheses series including serving as Editor for Volumes 1 and 8. In 1942, the Organic Reactions series was initiated and Adams served as Editor-in-Chief for 19 years. He served as personal research director for 198 Illinois Ph.D. recipients. He served as the Chair of the ACS, Division of Organic Chemistry in 1921 and as ACS president in 1935. He retired as a research professor in 1957 and he Died July 6. 1971 at the age of 81 after a short illness.
Taken in part from the biography published by D. Stanley Tarbell and Ann Tracy Tarbell
ACS Page on the Roger Adams Award
The Tarbell Biography from the National Academy of Sciences (PDF not available at NAS 8/4/2024)
Also available at National Academies Press (Vol. 53, 1982, p 1-47)
Tarbell, D. Stanley; Tarbell, Ann Tracy. Roger Adams: scientist and statesman, 1981, American Chemical Society. ISBN 0-8412-0598-1
Voices of Illinois-Roger Adams (parts 1-3)
University of Illinois Page on Roger Adams
The Roger Adams Papers Archive
Roger Adams on Wikipedia
The ACS Division of Organic Chemistry has named Gary A. Molander – Hirschmann Makineni Professor and Chair, Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, PA – the winner of the 2016 Paul G. Gassman Distinguished Service Award. The award was established in 1994 to recognize outstanding service to the organic chemistry community. Presented every other year …
The Organic Division requests nominations for the Paul G. Gassman Distinguished Service Award, which recognizes outstanding service to the organic chemistry community. Nominees must be long-standing members of the Organic Division who through their contributions to the organic chemical community in the United States have significantly enhanced the welfare of its members. Contributions to ACS …
The ACS Division of Organic Chemistry has named Jeffrey S. Moore, Murchison-Mallory Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science and Engineering at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as the 2015 Edward Leete Awardee which recognizes outstanding contributions to teaching and research in Organic Chemistry. The award is named in honor of Edward Leete who, through …
The ACS Division of Organic Chemistry has named Eric V. Anslyn Norman Hackerman Professor in Chemistry at The University of Texas at Austin as the 2013 Edward Leete Awardee which recognizes outstanding contributions to teaching and research in Organic Chemistry. The award is named in honor of Edward Leete who, through his contributions to science …
Nominees must be members of the Organic Division of the American Chemical Society who have made outstanding contributions to both teaching and research. Teaching should be considered in the broadest sense, including of professional chemists, the dissemination of information about chemistry to prospective chemists, to members of the profession, to students in other areas and …
