Awards

Aminoff Prize

On November 30, 1994, the Royal Academy of Science announced the award of the Gregori Aminoff to Dr Hugo M. Rietveld in recognition of the enormous impact that the methods developed by Dr Rietveld have had upon the field of X-ray powder diffraction and the use of the techniques to determine the structure of countless materials of ever growing complexity. Dr Rietveld is invited to receive the prize (a gold medal designed by Gregori Aminoff and $10,000 US) from the hands of HM King Carl XVII Gustoff at the Academy's anniversary meeting on March 13, 1995.

Fankuchen Memorial Award

Truebloods (Jean and Ken) and Gluskers (Jenny and Don) at the reception at the historical museum during the 1993 ACA meeting in Albuquerque. (Photo WLD)

The 1995 Fankuchen Memorial Award of the American Crystallographic Association (ACA) will be presented to Jenny Glusker of the Institute of Cancer Research in Philadelphia and Ken N. Trueblood of the University of California, Los Angeles. The award, recognizing their many contributions to crystallography as well as their excellence as teachers, will be presented at the annual meeting of the ACA in Montreal in July. Glusker and Trueblood, the authors of the popular introductory text "Crystal Structure Analysis: A Primer" were part of the team that worked with Dorothy Hodgkin on the structure of vitamin B12 in the 1950s. Glusker is currently Editor in Chief of Acta Cryst. D and Trueblood has been one of the leaders of the team offering a Summer School in Crystallography at the University of Pittsburgh for the past three years.

Ramachandran Medal

M. Vijayan

Professor M. Vijayan, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, received the G. N. Ramachandran Medal of the Indian National Science Academy. The medal, which was first awarded commemorating the 60th birthday of G. N. Ramachandran in 1982, is awarded every three years to honor outstanding contributions in the field of Molecular Biology, Biophysics and Crystallography. Professor Vijayan is the current chairman of the IUCr Commission of Biological Macromolecules and a Co-Editor of Acta Crystallographica. He has made significant contributions in biological crystallography and has developed a school in macromolecular crystallography at Bangalore, which has served as a national nucleus for the development of the area in India.

Ernest Guenther Award

Jon Clardy, Horace White Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University, received the 1994 Ernest Guenther Award in the Chemistry of Essential Oils and Related Products from the American Chemical Society for his extensive contribution to understanding the structure and activity of natural products including fungal toxins, antitumor antibiotics, and marine products. He has published more than 500 papers dealing with isolation, structural characterization, and synthesis of highly complex enzyme inhibitors, anti-inflammatory agents, analgesics, and anticancer agents.

Gairdner Awards

Pamela Bjorkman (California Institute of Technology) and Don Wiley (Harvard University) were honored with 1994 Gairdner Awards for their crystal structure analysis of an immune complex between histocompatability molecules in cells with peptides from foreign antigens, a major contribution to understanding how the body recognizes foreign invaders.

BCA Industrial Group Award

Dr I. F. Ferguson received the 1994 BCA Industrial Group Award in recognition of of his significant contributions to crystallography which included his development of the HELLFIRE suite of programs including FIRESTAR (lattice parameter), FIRECOMET (powder diffraction calculation), and FAFNIR (crystallite size and shape).