John Gamble Kirkwood Award

Recipients

1962       Professor Lars Onsager, Yale University (Received Nobel Prize in 1968)

1963       Professor Manfred Eigen, Max Planck Institut (Received Nobel Prize in 1967)

1964       Professor Robert S. Mulliken, University of Chicago (Received Nobel Prize in 1966)

1965       Professor Robert B. Woodward, Harvard University (Received Nobel Prize in 1965)

1966       Professor Henry Taube, Stanford University (Received Nobel Prize in 1983)

1967       Professor Joseph E. Mayer, University of California, San Diego

1969       Professor Neil Bartlett, University of California, Berkeley

1971       Professor Paul Flory, Stanford University (Received Nobel Prize in 1974)

1973       Professor Sune Bergstrom, Karolinska Institut (Received Nobel Prize in 1982)

1976       Professor Albert Eschenmoser, Eidgenossische Technische, Hochschule, Zurich

1978       Professor F. Albert Cotton, Texas A&M University

1980       Professor E. J. Corey, Harvard University (Received Nobel Prize in 1990)

1982       Professor Bruno Zimm, University of California, San Diego

1984       Professor Earl Muetterties, University of California, Berkeley

1986       Professor Richard N. Zare, Stanford University

1989       Professor Richard R. Ernst, Eidgenossische Technische, Zurich

1991       Professor Ryoji Noyori, Nagoya University, Japan (Received Nobel Prize in 2001)

1994       Professor John A. People, Northwestern University

1996       Professor Ahmed Zewail, California Institute of Technology (Received Nobel Prize in 1999)

1998       Professor Peter B. Dervan, California Institute of Technology

2002       Dr. Ad Bax, National Institutes of Health

2005       Professor Robert H. Grubbs, California Institute of Technology (Received Nobel Prize in 2005)

2008       Professor JoAnne Stubbe, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

2010       Professor Peter G. Schultz, Scripps Research Institute

2013       Professor W. E. Moerner, Stanford University (Received Nobel Prize in 2014)

2016       Professor Jennifer Doudna, University of California, Berkeley (Received Nobel Prize in 2020)

2018       Professor Charles M. Lieber, Harvard University

2020       Professor John F. Hartwig, Berkeley College of Chemistry 

2025       Professor Teri W. Odom, Northwestern University

About John Gamble Kirkwood and The Kirkwood Award

Excerpted from the remarks of Jerome A. Berson on November 21, 1996

portrait of a man

John Gamble Kirkwood

THE KIRKWOOD AWARD celebrates the life and work of John Gamble Kirkwood, 1907-1959, former Sterling Professor of Chemistry and Chair of the Department at Yale. Supported by the joint contributions of the New Haven Section of the American Chemical Society and the generosity of dedicated private donors, this award is conferred every two years for “outstanding research contributions, theoretical or experimental, in the physical sciences.”

One way of judging the importance of the Kirkwood Award is to realize the stature of its recipients. Since the award was initiated in 1962, ten of the twenty recipients subsequently have won the Nobel Prize*.

Another measure of the Kirkwood Award is the stature of the man whom it commemorates. His brilliance emerged early: he got his Ph.D. from MIT in 1929, when he was only 22. After several years of postdoctoral research, mostly on his own, he began an academic career at Cornell as an assistant professor. Chicago lured him away for a couple of years, but the Cornell people apparently were able finally to get their act together and brought him back as Todd Professor in 1938. He moved to Caltech as Noyes Professor in 1947, and finally to Yale in 1951.

Kirkwood’s research interests were broad, and his mastery of the field of physical chemistry profound. I offer the following text from the citation for one of the many awards to Kirkwood, the William Clyde Devane Award: “Kirkwood’s scientific explorations ranged from quantum chemistry to biopolymers. His greatest impact derived from his elegant and far-reaching applications of statistical mechanics to condensed systems and his development of methodology for predicting equilibrium and transport properties of solutions.”

Beyond his scholarly interests was Kirkwood’s clear vision of what education in chemistry should be. His arrival here initiated a resurgence of Yale Chemistry. He improved the support for research, democratized the teaching assignments, modernized the system of mentorship of graduate students, and vigorously recruited outstanding faculty. Under his leadership, this department became an active center of chemical education and research. His own powers as a teacher are perhaps best documented by the students he turned out, at least nine of whom became members of the National Academy. Just to calibrate you, I would point out that this is a phenomenal number; among chemists, I believe that the only other mentor to produce that many was R. B. Woodward. Although Kirkwood’s stay at Yale ended all too soon, the goals of excellence he set for us during his eight years here still guide the department’s aspirations.

*As of 2025, twenty-nine recipients and thirteen Nobel Prize winners.