# George B. Kistiakowsky Prize ## expand\_more 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