August 18, 2011
Larry Dalton wins 2011 Linus Pauling Award
The ACS Oregon, Portland, and Puget Sound Sections have named Larry R. Dalton, B. Seymour Rabinovitch Chair Professor of Chemistry and George B. Kauffman College of Arts and Science Professor at the University of Washington, the recipient of the 2011 Linus Pauling Award. The award recognizes outstanding achievement in chemistry comparable to that of its namesake and first winner, Linus Pauling, a Pacific Northwest native and 1954 Nobel Laureate in chemistry.
A farm boy from Belpre, Ohio, Dalton received his B.S. degrees in chemistry and mathematics from the Honors College of Michigan State University in 1965. He went on to earn his A.M. & Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University in 1971 as a Harvard University Fellow and a National Institutes of Health Predoctoral Fellow. Following his graduate research, Dalton became an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Vanderbilt University as well as a consultant to the research staff of Varian Analytical Instrumentation Division. Dalton’s contributions to statistical mechanics and computer programming unified various approaches to analyzing molecular dynamics, including rotational diffusion and local mode dynamics. The new experimental and theoretical (computer simulation) methods were applied to a number of problems in biological and material sciences.
In 1976, Dalton joined the Chemistry Faculty of the State University of New York at Stony Brook while simultaneously consulting for Bruker Instruments and IBM focusing his research on the development of new forms of magnetic resonance instrumentation and application of the techniques to characterization of biomolecules and novel species in material science. In 1982, Dalton moved to the University of Southern California continuing his research on materials chemistry, in particular on organic electroactive materials, on DNA mutagenesis, and on red cell proteins. In 1998, Dalton joined the faculty of the University of Washington where he continues to this day.
Dalton’s other awards have included Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (1974), Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award (1975), National Institutes of Health Research Career Development Award (1975 & 1976), Burlington Northern Foundation Faculty Achievement Award (1986), University of Southern California Associates Award for Creativity in Research and Scholarship (1990), Richard C. Tolman Medal of the Southern California Section of the American Chemical Society (1996), Distinguished Alumni Award of Michigan State University (2000), IEEE/LEOS William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award (2006), Chemistry of Materials Award of the American Chemical Society (2003), and Quality of Education for Minorities in Mathematics, Science, and Engineering Network Giants in Science Award (2005).
A symposium honoring Dalton will be held at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon on November 5, 2011. In addition to Dalton, speakers will include Tobin Marks, Northwestern University; Bruce Robinson, University of Washington; and Rene Overney, University of Washington. The medal presentation ceremony will occur at an evening banquet session on that same day. More information can be found at http://pauling.uoregon.edu.