Alumni Gazette

Alumnus Awarded Nation’s Highest Science Honor

MEDAL WINNER: An applied physical chemist, Prausnitz was one of eight National Medal of Science recipients honored last March. (Photo: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

The nation’s highest scientific honor was presented to John Prausnitz ’51 (MS), a professor of chemical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. His work is credited with improving the design of large chemical plants to make them safer, more efficient, and more environmentally friendly.

Prausnitz, who also is a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was one of eight recipients of the 2003 National Medal of Science recognized by President Bush at a White House ceremony last spring. The award, established by Congress in 1959, is administered by the National Science Foundation.

A leading scholar of molecular thermodynamics, Prausnitz was honored for his engineering-oriented approach into how molecules interact as fluids, solids, and gases. That work has been key to developing models of how particles behave during the kind of large-scale chemical processes that occur at chemical plants.

Prausnitz joined the Berkeley faculty in 1955 after earning his Ph.D. at Princeton.