# E. Bright Wilson Prize ## expand\_more F or over 50 years, E. Bright Wilson, Jr., was one of the most distinguished and admired professors of chemistry at Harvard. He was born in 1908 in Gallatin, Tennessee, and grew up in Yonkers, New York. His choice of science as a career was made in high school, when he discovered the classic text by Lewis and Randall in the town library and was captivated by the scope and logical beauty of thermodynamics. After earning a B.S. in 1930 and M.S. in 1931 at Princeton, and publishing several experimental papers, Bright headed west to Caltech to pursue theoretical work with Linus Pauling. He completed his Ph.D. in 1933, but continued another years as a post-doctoral research fellow. Bright’s exemplary notes on Pauling’s lectures led to their celebrated book, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, published in 1935. This became the canonical text for a host of chemists; it is still in print and current texts still borrow liberally from it. Bright came to Harvard in 1934 as one of the first Junior Fellows elected to the newly endowed Society of Fellows. He became Assistant Professor in 1936, was promoted to tenure only 3 years later at the early age of 30, and was appointed the Theodore William Richards Professor in 1947. In his research, Bright became a major architect of chemical physics. He provided definitive theoretical treatments of many aspects of molecular vibrational and rotational dynamics, especially symmetry analysis, and developed with his students key experimental methods in infrared and microwave spectroscopy. He also published two extremely useful books, Introduction to Scientific Research in 1952, and Molecular Vibrations with Decius and Cross in 1955. Both are still in print. He was the sole author of more than eighty papers, and trained 90 Ph.D.’s and some 60 postdoctoral fellows. In his teaching, Bright ranged over a wide spectrum, including a general course on the scientific method, several undergraduate courses, and graduate courses presenting original treatments of advanced topics. At whatever level, Bright’s students appreciated his wholehearted commitment, high standards, and passion for lucidity and integrity. Bright’s awards and honors included the Debye Award, Rumford Medal, National Medal of Science, and the Welch Award, among others. As a way of expressing their esteem, Bright’s students and colleagues endowed the Wilson Prize Lectureship, to be awarded each year to a young chemist of outstanding promise. E. Bright Wilson died in 1992; his legacy will live on. **Prize Lecturers** 1983 Kenneth G. Wilson 1984 Mark S. Wrighton 1985 Jacqueline K. Barton 1986 Jean-Louis Martin 1987 Peter G. Schultz 1988 Jeremy M. Berg 1989 David J. Nesbitt 1990 Charles M. Lieber 1992 James M. Mayer 1993 Douglas C. Rees 1994 A. Paul Alivisators 1995 Christopher C. Cummins 1996 Chaitan Khosla 1998 Chad A. Mirkin 1999 Daniel E. Kahne 2000 Moungi G. Bawendi 2001 Angela M. Belcher 2002 Jeffrey R. Long 2005 Patrick G. Harran 2008 Alice Y. Ting 2011 Yi Cui 2012 Christopher J. Chang 2012 Gregory Engel 2014 Karl Deisseroth 2016 Feng Zhang 2017 William Greenleaf 2018 Robert Knowles 2019 Yogesh Surendranath 2020 Seth Herzon 2023 Todd Hyster 2024 Michele Ceriotti