William J. Mitchell, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, has been chosen by the Architectural Institute of Japan to receive the 1997 Appreciation Prize for his "achievements in the development of architectural design theory and practice in the information age as well as worldwide promotion of CAD education." Recipients of this award are nominated by committee members of the Architectural Institute of Japan based on their contributions to the field of architecture.
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Jackie Ying, the Raymond A. and Helen E. St. Laurent Career Development Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, has won the American Chemical Society's Faculty Fellowship Award in Solid State Chemistry, sponsored by Exxon Corp. The $10,000 award is selected by the ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry and presented to a nontenured faculty member based on his or her past and current contributions to knowledge of synthesis, reactivity, structure and bonding in solids.
Professor Ying's award recognizes her work on synthesis and catalytic properties of nanocrystalline, nonstoichiometric oxide catalysts; derivation of a novel class of transition metal oxide molecular sieves; and structure and properties of layered transition metal molybdates.
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At its Commencement exercises on May 22, Rutgers University bestowed an honorary doctorate on Samuel Goldblith, professor emeritus of food science and former vice president of resource development. Professor Goldblith's "pioneering research on the principles of food preparation in microwave ovens has contributed to the appliance's 90 percent penetration of homes in the United States," the Rutgers citation said. "He is recognized internationally for, among other things, his work in reopening the exchange of science and technology between Japan and the United States after World War II by establishing an MIT office in Japan." Professor Goldblith (SB '40) was commissioned as an army lieutenant through MIT's Reserve Officer Training Corps and survived the infamous Bataan Death March, spending 41 months as a prisoner of war. He returned to MIT to receive the SM and PhD in food technology.
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The Harvard Varsity Club Hall of Fame has inducted Professor of Geology and Geophysics Leigh "Wiki" Royden for rowing. Professor Royden, a Harvard alumna (AB '76), was US national champion in the single sculls in 1975 and also rowing in an eight that came in second in the world championships.
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Institute Professor David Baltimore, the Ivan R. Cottrell Professor of Molecular Biology and Immunology, and Professor Robert A. Laudise, adjunct professor of crystallography and electronic materials in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, have been elected to the American Philosophical Society. The APS, founded more than 250 years ago by Benjamin Franklin and friends, is the country's oldest learned society.
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Professor Satoru Masamune, the Arthur C. Cope Professor of Chemistry, will receive the 1997 Fujihara Prize this month. The 10-million-yen prize (about $80,000) is one of the most prestigious in Japan. Professor Masamune is being honored for his discovery of a powerful synthetic strategy for controlling relative as well as absolute stereochemistry with chiral reagents. The strategy changed the way organic chemists design organic synthesis and revolutionized their ability to efficiently synthesize stereochemically complex acyclic molecules. Ginjiro Fujihara, founder of the Japanese paper industry, established the prize in 1960.
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Professor of Geophysics J. Brian Evans has won the Humboldt Research Award for Senior US Scientists. The award, granted for accomplishments in research and teaching, supports a year of research and study in Germany.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on June 11, 1997.
