George B. Kistiakowsky Prize

George Kistiakowsky was born November 18, 1900, in Kiev, Ukraine to an academic family. He left Russia in 1921 after an exciting military period with the White Russian forces. His studies of chemistry in Berlin culminated with the Ph.D. degree under the direction of Professor Max Bodenstein. He came to Princeton in 1926 where his distinction as a physical chemist was founded. He moved to Harvard in 1930. A broad range of fundamental problems in thermochemistry and especially in the kinetics of chemical reactions were treated by him in a masterful manner.

In the war years, 1940-46, his expertise in the fundamentals of explosives led to making him director of the explosives division of the National Defense Research Committee. He became chief of the explosives division of the Los Alamos Laboratory in 1944. After returning to Harvard and serving as department chairman from 1947-50, he continued active involvement with government affairs. He took a leave of absence from 1959-61 to serve as Special Assistant for Science and Technology for President Eisenhower. These years are recorded in his book entitled A Scientist in the White House. He was Vice President of the National Academy of Sciences from 1965- 73. From the late sixties until his death in 1982, he worked intensively for nuclear disarmament, serving as chairman of the Council for a Livable World from 1977-82. His numerous medals and awards reflect his distinction in science and public affairs.

Prize Lecturers

1971    George B. Kistiakowsky
1972    Gerhard Herzberg
1973    Harold S. Johnson
1975    John C. Polanyi
1976    George C. Pimentel
1977    Frederick Kaufman
1978    Clyde A. Hutchison, Jr.
1979    David Turner
1980    Benjamin Widom
1980    Herbert S. Gutowsky
1983    Sir David Bates
1984    John S. Waugh
1985    Eizi Hirota
1986    John Pople
1988    J. H. van der Waals
1989    Yuan T. Lee
1990    Berni Adler
1991    John Fenn
1992    W. Carl Lineberger
1993    Louis E. Brus
1994    William H. Miller
1996    Richard N. Zare
1997    Rudolph A. Marcus
1998    Richard E. Smalley
1999    Harry B. Gray
2000    Graham R. Fleming
2001    Ahmed H. Zewail
2002    David C. Clary
2005    Mostafa A. El-Sayed
2006    David Chandler
2007    Steven Chu
2007    Mildred Dresselhaus
2011    Hans-Joachim Freund
2012    A. Paul Alivisatos
2012    Carlos J. Bustamante
2015    William E. Moerner
2016   Yigong Shi
2018    Stefan Hall
2019    James L. Skinner
2020   Omar Yaghi
2023   Ben Feringa
2024  Matthew Rosseinsky