August 3, 2005 | Faculty

Marks Awarded Bailar Medal

Tobin Marks

Tobin J. Marks, the Vladimir N. Ipatieff Professor of Catalytic Chemistry and Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, has been awarded the 2005 John C. Bailar Medal by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in recognition of his pioneering inorganic chemical research. This international award is made annually on the basis of accomplishment to an outstanding inorganic chemist. Previous winners include Fred Basolo and James Ibers of Northwestern.

Marks’ research focuses on the design, synthesis and in-depth characterization of new substances having important chemical, physical and/or biological properties. His work is credited with having major impact on contemporary catalysis with seminal research in the areas of organo-f-element homogeneous catalysis, metal-ligand bonding energetics, supported organometallic catalysis and metallocene polymerization catalysis.

He has been a leader in the development and understanding of single-site olefin polymerization catalysis (now a multi-billion dollar industry) as well as in the study of new materials having remarkable electrical, mechanical, interfacial and photonic properties.

During his career, Marks has received numerous awards, including some of the most prestigious national and international awards in the fields of inorganic, catalytic, materials and organometallic chemistry. Recent honors include the American Institute of Chemists Gold Medal, the Burwell Award of the North American Catalysis Society, the Sir Edward Frankland Prize Lectureship of the British Royal Society of Chemistry and the Karl Ziegler Prize of the German Chemical Society.

Marks also is recipient of three American Chemical Society national awards and the American Chemical Society Chicago Section’s 2001 Josiah Willard Gibbs Medal, regarded by many as the highest award given to chemists next to the Nobel Prize. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993.