Alan Marshall wins 2 national chemistry awards

World-renowned researcher and inventor Alan Marshall is set to receive two significant awards for his landmark achievements in chemistry.

First, the New York Section of the American Chemical Society (ACS) has named Marshall the winner of the 2012 William H. Nichols Medal, generally awarded annually to one person for original research. Sixteen previous winners of the Nichols medal have gone on to win the Nobel Prize. Second, the Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh has named Marshall the winner of the 2012 Pittsburgh Analytical Chemistry Award. Both awards will be officially bestowed in March 2012.

“I am naturally delighted by these awards, for different reasons,” Marshall said. “The Nichols medal is more senior and spans all of the subdisciplines of chemistry so it’s a special treat to join prior awardees such as Nobelists Linus Pauling (chemical bond theory), Melvin Calvin (photosynthesis), Robert Woodward (organic synthesis), and Paul Flory (polymers), among others. The Pittsburgh Analytical Chemistry Award is more specialized, so the fun part there is that I know many of the prior awardees personally.”

Marshall is widely recognized for his pioneering work in chemical analysis, specifically the co-invention and development of Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FT-ICR) mass spectrometry, which has applications that range from medical to environmental to industrial. In 2009, he was named a member of the American Chemical Society’s first group of fellows, the only person in Florida to receive the distinction, and that same year he received the New Frontiers in Hydrocarbons Award, sponsored by Italian energy company Eni, as well as the Eastern Analytical Symposium Award for Outstanding Achievements in Mass Spectrometry. Before that, among many honors, Marshall received the 2008 Ralph and Helen Oesper Award from the Cincinnati section of the ACS and the 2007 Chemical Pioneer Award from the American Institute of Chemists.

Marshall, Robert O. Lawton Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Florida State University, also directs the Ion Cyclotron Resonance Program at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory.

To read more, go to http://www.fsu.edu/news/2011/07/29/marshall.awards/