awards
Samuel Danishefsky Honored With William H. Nichols Medal
S
amuel J. Danishefsky, professor of chemistry at Columbia University and Eugene W. Kettering Bioorganic Chair at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, has received the 1999 William H. Nichols Medal of the American Chemical Society New York Section "for his contributions to bioorganic chemistry; in particular, for creative contributions at the interface of organic synthesis and biology." Nearly 500 of his colleagues, students, and family attended the March 15 awards program, which consisted of a symposium and a black-tie banquet Danishefsky's formal training included study at the Talmudical Academy in Manhattan and a B.S. degree from Yeshiva University (1956). Following the example of his older brother Isadore, Danishefsky took an interest in chemistry in college. Danishefsky dedicated his award lecture to his brother, saying, "I didn't know what a Ph.D. was until he got one." A lifelong fascination with organic chemistry followed from absorption with two introductory treatments of the subject—one by Raymond Brewster and the other by Louis and Mary Fieser. This exposure led him to pursue graduate studies at Harvard University, where he received a Ph.D. degree in 1962 under the direction of Peter Yates. From 1961 to 1963, he was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University under Gilbert Stork. Danishefsky's first independent academic position, which he took in 1963, was at the University of Pittsburgh where he became professor of chemistry in 1971 and University Professor in 1979. In 1980, he moved to Yale University and served as chairman of the chemistry department from 1981 to 1987. He was named Eugene Higgins Professor in 1984 and Sterling Professor in 1990. In 1993, he returned to New York as professor of chemistry at Columbia University and as Kettering Professor and head of the Laboratory for Bioorganic Chemistry at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. His research interests have been in the areas of synthetic strategy, synthetic methodology, cytotoxic natural products,
and, most recently, fully synthetic carbohydrate-based tumor antigens. His honors include membership in the Connecticut Academy of Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences. Danishefsky has received numerous awardsfromACS, among them the Ernest Guenther Award in the Chemistry of Natural Products, an Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, and the Claude S. Hudson Award in Carbohydrate Chemistry. In 1995, he received the Tischler MedalfromHarvard University, and in 1996 he shared the Wolf Prize in Chemistry with Gilbert Stork. In 1997, he received the Tetrahedron Prize for Creative Work in Organic Chemistry and the Paul Ehrlich Prize from the
French Pharmaceutical Society. Danishefsky also received last year's Arthur C. Cope AwardfromACS. The Nichols Medal has a distinguished history. It is the oldest award made by an ACS section. William H. Nichols, a charter member of ACS and its president in 1918 and 1919, was a pioneer in the development of the chemical industry in the U.S. and an early champion of the importance of chemistry in the future growth of the nation. In 1902, he expressed his conviction by establishing an annual award, the first in its field, of a gold medal to a chemical scientist for original research. Since its inception, through an endowment fund Nichols conveyed to ACS, the award has been administered by the society's New York Section. It has been perpetuated by the generosity of Nichols, his family, and the Nichols Foundation. The New York Section has named 93 distinguished chemists as William H. Nichols Medalists since 1903. Fourteen have subsequently been awarded Nobel Prizes. The Nichols Medal itself depicts the allegoricalfigureof Dr. Faust in his laboratory as described by Goethe, and the obverse side bears an inscription of the medalist's name and award citation.
