Contact:
Lauren Ward
412-268-7761

For immediate release:
March 21, 2005

Carnegie Mellon to Award Dickson Prize to Harvard Luminary

George M. Whitesides

EVENT: Carnegie Mellon University will award its prestigious Dickson Prize in Science to George M. Whitesides, considered one of the world's most creative chemists. Whitesides is one of the pioneers in molecular self-assembly and in using enzymes in large-scale organic syntheses. He also is an inventor of microcontact printing and is developing methods to make 3-D microstructures, techniques he calls "micro-origami" after the Japanese art of paper folding.

Whitesides, the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor at Harvard University, chaired the Department of Chemistry at Harvard from 1986 to 1989. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Whitesides has received numerous honors, including the National Medal of Science and the American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry.

As part of the prize ceremony, Whitesides will deliver a lecture, "Assumptions: If common assumptions about the modern world break down, then what could science and technology make happen?" The lecture is free and open to the public.

The Dickson Prize in Science is given annually to an individual for making the greatest strides in a scientific field in the past year.

WHEN: 4:30 p.m., Monday, March 28

WHERE: Auditorium, Mellon Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. Reception immediately following the lecture, Mellon Institute Lobby, 4th Floor