WHITE HOUSE HONORS SCIENTISTS: AWARDS: Winners of National Medals of Science and of Technology & Innovation include chemical scientists

PRESIDENT Barack Obama announced the recipients of the nation’s top awards bestowed on scientists, engineers, and inventors. The seven researchers honored with the National Medal of Science—including two chemists—and the five researchers honored with the National Medal of Technology & Innovation—including one chemist—will receive their awards at the White House later this year. “Each of these extraordinary scientists, engineers, and inventors is guided by a passion for innovation, a fearlessness even as they explore the very frontiers of human knowledge, and a desire to make the world a better place,” the President said in a statement. Jacqueline K. Barton, chemistry professor and chair of the division of chemistry and chemical engineering at Caltech, was selected as a Medal of Science recipient “for discovery of a new property of the DNA helix, long-range electron transfer, and for showing that electron transfer depends upon stacking of the base pairs and DNA dynamics.” “It’s a ...