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Columns::January 28, 2002
State budget proposal includes pay raises, other UGA priorities
Former White House chief of staff to speak at annual conference
UGA celebrates the life, legacy of Martin Luther King
Beyond description
Student ‘ambassadors’ visit area high schools
Signed, sealed, and delivered
A dollar could have bought a lot more
Vet medicine professor puts the bite on infectious animal diseases
Newsmakers
Administrative Changes
Home Suite Home
Campus News
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| Norman Allinger has taught at UGA since 1969. (Photo by Paul Efland) |
Computational Center director wins chemistry award
By Phil Williams
phil@franklin.uga.edu
Norman L. Allinger, director of the Computational Center for Molecular Structure and Design and professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Georgia, has been named winner of the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry, a major international career achievement award.
For more than 150 years, Franklin Medals, sponsored by the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, have honored outstanding individuals who have transformed entire fields of knowledge through their scientific discoveries and technological innovations.
The honor will be presented to Allinger and laureates in five other fields during a black-tie dinner in Philadelphia on April 25.
“Looking at a list of names of people who have been Franklin laureates in the past, I note Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Pierre and Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Jacques Cousteau and David Packer,” says Allinger. “I am certainly very flattered to have my name added to this list.”
Allinger received his B.S. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1951 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1954. He was on the faculty at Wayne State University before coming to the University of Georgia as Research Professor in 1969. He is known for his pioneering efforts in the use of computational chemistry, especially molecular mechanics, to solve a variety of chemical problems. Molecular mechanics allows calculation of molecular shape and molecular energetics. Allinger is the author of the MM2 and MM3 molecular mechanics software packages.
Allinger is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, which calls him the world’s foremost expert on molecular mechanics. His extensive work is widely cited and used in hundreds of laboratories all over the world, most recently in the context of drug-receptor and enzyme-substrate interactions.
Among his numerous other awards are the Chemical Pioneer Award from the American Institute of Chemists, the Arthur C. Cope Scholar award from the American Chemical Society, the Florida Award from the Florida section of the ACS, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the Charles Herty Medal from the Georgia section of the ACS, the Award for Computers in Chemistry from the ACS, and an honorary doctorate from the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1996 he was awarded the Schrödinger Medal from the World Association of Theoretically Oriented Chemists.
The Franklin Institute awards program was launched in 1824 when the institute began giving awards and premiums for superior products and inventions at the annual American Manufacturer’s Exhibition. These exhibitions continued for the next
50 years. The endowed awards began with a gift of $1,000 from Philadelphia philanthropist Elliot Cresson to establish the Cresson Medal in 1848.
Today the institute awards 22 medals with a total endowment of more than $16.6 million. Award criteria say that “The subject must be an invention, discovery, technological development or body of work reflecting extraordinary insight, skills or creativity. The work must have scientific value and/or proven utility. It must have provided significant direction for future research, solved an important problem or provided great benefit to the public.” Winners are chosen by a Committee on Science and the Arts, a group of distinguished international leaders in science and technology charged with choosing men and women whose achievements reflect the spirit, innovation and inspiration of Franklin himself.
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