Polymer Chemistry Award presentation

The Division of Polymer Chemistry Award presented to Maurice L. Huggins November 24, 1980... 

Mitsuo Sawamoto, born in Kyoto, Japan (1951), received his B.S. (1974), M.S. (1976), and Ph.D. (1979) degrees in polymer chemistry from Kyoto University under the direction of Toshinobu Higashimura. After postdoctoral research with Joseph P. Kennedy at the Institute of Polymer Science, The University of Akron, Akron, OH (1980-81), he joined the faculty of the Department of Polymer Chemistry, Kyoto University, in 1981 as a research instructor. He was promoted to Lecturer (1991), to Associate Professor (1993), and to Professor (1994), his current position, of the same department. Sawamoto also serves as one of the three Editors of the Journal of Polymer Science, Part A Polymer Chemistry (1995-present) and as an Editorial Advisory Board member of Macromolecular Chemistry and Physics, the Journal of Macromolecular Science, Chemistry, and e-Polymers, and is the recipient of the 1991 Award of the Society of Polymer Science, Japan, the 1998 Divisional Award of the Chemical Society of Japan, the 2001 Aggarval Lectureship in Polymer Science, Cornell University, and the 2001 Arthur K. Doolittle Award of the ACS PMSE Division. With more than 250 articles and reviews, his research interest covers living radical and cationic polymerizations, precision polymer synthesis, and the chemistry of radical and carbocationic reaction intermediates. 

PRESENTATION OF THE DIVISION OF POLYMER CHEMISTRY AWARD TO MAURICE L. HUGGINS... 

On the occasion of the presentation of the Division of Polymer Chemistry Award to Dr. Maurice L. Huggins on November 24, 1980, a number of formal and informal events, which accompanied the award address published in this volume, occurred which added materially to the presentation and we hope tended to enhance the tradition of the award. These events included the presentation ceremonies, the introduction of the awardee, and a panel discussion involving questions and reminiscing about the awardee s career. A special flavor to the ceremony was derived by the presentation of a scroll signed by many of his polymer friends in Japan and an additional gift of a 200-year old Japanese wooden print to Dr. Huggins by the Society of Polymer Science, Japan. 

The highlight of the conference was the presentation of the Third Division of Polymer Chemistry Award to Dr. Maurice L. Huggins for his outstanding contributions to... 

A particular highlight of the meeting was the presentation to Professor Michael Szwarc of the 1990 Division of Polymer Chemistry Award by Dr. J. L. Benham, Chairman of the /lymer Division. During his Award adi ess. Professor Szwarc described how he had become a polymer chemist and later developed "living polymers." Without a doubt. Professor Szwarc has made a profound contribution to the polymer field, which has yielded many new forms of living polymerization. 

The symposium also marks the occasion when the Second Division of Polymer Chemistry Award was presented to Professor C. S. Marvel for his outstanding achievements in polymer chemistry. The proceedings of this Symposium are recorded in this volume. 

What we would like to do in this presentation is to take you back through this 60 some years of the development of polymer chemistry in which the award winner has been involved and show you the background of some of the most outstanding contributions he has made to polymer chemistry in his own words. 

Amidst the chaos of war, more quiet streams of scientific advance were also flowing. Universities in Europe, England and the United States were centers of intellectual activity that allowed scientists to think about the new phenomena of polymer science and apply the latest theoretical ideas to their explication. One of the fruits of this endeavor was the publication of Principles of Polymer Chemistry by Paul J. Flory (1910-1985) in 1953 [3]. With the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Hermann Staudinger in 1953 for his discoveries in the field of macromolecular chemistry , the field of polymer science was firmly established as a thriving branch of intellectual and industrial activity. The present... 

The Chairman of the Division of Polymer Chemistry, Bill M. Culbertson in making the formal presentation of the award expressed gratification at the excellent attendance to honor someone that everyone admires, respects and appreciates. He was pleased that Speed s two children, Mary Marvel from Crosse Point, Michigan and Dr. John T. Marvel from Monsanto in St. Louis, could be present to help honor their father. 

The methodology of solid phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) [65, 66] has been credited with the award of 1984 Nobel Prize in chemistry [67] to its inventor, Bruce R. Merrifield of the Rockefeller University. At the heart of the SPPS lies an insoluble polymer support or gel , which renders the synthetic peptide intermediates insoluble, and hence readily separable from excess reagents and by-products. In addition to peptide synthesis, beaded polymer gels are also being studied for a number of other synthetic and catalytic reactions [2]. Ideally, the polymer support should be chemically inert and not interfere with the chemistry under investigation. The provision of chemical inertiKss presents no difficulty, but the backbone structure of the polymer may profoundly influence the course of the reaction on the polymer support. This topic has attracted considerable interest, particularly in relation to the properties of polystyrene (nonpolar, hydrophobic), polydimethylacrylamide (polar, hydrophilic), and copoIy(styrene-dimethylaciylamide) (polar-nonpolar, amphiphilic) (see later). 

In our opinion these are self-organising systems that spontaneously form dissipative structures above certain characteristic volume concentrations. Such structures form in non-isolated systems far removed from thermodynamic equilibrium, where the determining variables satisfy non-linear dynamic laws. (For his pioneering work in this field the Belgian physical chemist Ilya Prigogine was awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1977.) Furthermore, the conductivity of the polymers that form the structures can in our opinion be explained better by the assumption that freely mobile electrons are present within particle structures only a few nanometres in size. 

Most polymers (typified by polystyrene and polyethylene) are electrically insulating and have conductivities doped with iodine to become electrically conducting (values have now been reported up to olO Scm ) represented a pivotal discovery in polymer science that ultimately resulted in the award of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2000 [4]. The study of electrically conducting polymers is now well advanced and two extremes in the continuum of transport mechanisms exist. If the charge carriers are present in delocalized orbitals that form a band structure along the polymer backbone, they conduct by a delocalization mechanism. In contrast, isolated groups in a polymer can function as acceptors or donors of electrons and can permit... 

T his book is based largely on the papers presented at a Polyether - Symposium in honor of Dr. Charles C. Price, Benjamin Franklin Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, on the occasion of his receiving the Creative Invention Award of the American Chemical Society for his pioneering U.S. Patent 2,866,774 on elastomeric polyether urethanes. One of the symposium papers by N. Doddi, W. C. Forsman, and C. C. Price has already been published in /. Polymer Set., Polym. Phys. Ed. (1974) 12, 1395. In addition, two papers are included from P. Dreyfuss and T. Saegusa with S. Kobayashi, outstanding polyether researchers who were not able to participate in the symposium. 

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