Schatz Honored Twice by American Chemical Society

George C. Schatz

The Debye Award, which dates to 1962, recognizes outstanding research in physical chemistry. As an ACS Fellow, Schatz is being honored for excellence in chemistry and service to society. He is the first Northwestern faculty member to receive either honor.

Schatz works on theory and computational modeling in a variety of nanoscience areas as well as in the related fields of biophysics and materials. His nanoscience research has focused on the optical properties of noble metal nanoparticles, nanoholes in films and other nanostructured materials of relevance to chemical and biological sensing applications, and on modeling nanopatterning and molecular self-assembly processes.

Schatz also has studied DNA structures and thermal properties, transport in ion-channels and the formation of water droplets on nanoscale structures. In addition, he has worked actively in the theory and modeling of the mechanical properties of hard materials, including diamond films, graphene and carbon nanotubes.

His numerous awards include the 2008 Foresight Institute Feynman Prize, the Max Planck Research Award and the Bourke Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Schatz is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Sciences. He is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Physical Chemistry.

Schatz is co-author of three books and author of more than 500 publications. His research is supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Defense Research Advanced Projects Agency.

I think it signified the end of the 20th Century.

-Professor Peter Hayes on the Fall of the Berlin Wall