The John Gamble Kirkwood Award, presented biennially for “outstanding contributions to the field of Chemistry,” honors the late Professor John G. Kirkwood, Chairman of the Department at Yale.

Charles M. Lieber, the Joshua and Beth Friedman University Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, investigates science and technology at the nanoscale. For reference, one nanometer is roughly the size of one individual DNA base and smaller even than a virus, gene, or cell. 

Lieber's work harnesses the unique physical properties of novel nanomaterials to push scientific boundaries in electronics and computing, biology and medicine.

With the Kirkwood, Lieber joins a prolific group. The most recent Kirkwood Award recipients include Jennifer Doudna (University of California, Berkeley, 2016), W.E. Moerner (Stanford University, 2013), Peter Schultz (Scripps Research Institute, 2010), and JoAnne Stubbe (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008). A number of previous recipients have subsequently become Nobel Laureates.

The Awards Committee invites recipients to a ceremonial banquet in the Spring. There, Lieber will formally accept his award and present a seminar on his current research endeavors.