American Institute of Chemists Gold Medal
The American Institute of Chemists (AIC) Gold Medal recognizes extraordinary accomplishments in chemistry or chemical engineering in the United States.
First presented in 1926, previous winners include Nobel laureates Glenn T. Seaborg, K. Barry Sharpless, Herbert C. Brown, Elizabeth Blackburn, and Dudley Herschbach, as well as renowned researchers Chad A. Mirkin, Mary Lowe Good, Steven J. Lippard, Jacqueline Barton, and George M. Whitesides.
The AIC Gold Medal has been presented jointly with the Science History Institute since 2003. Winners are honored each spring.
2024 Medalist: Peter Schultz
The 2024 AIC Gold Medal was presented to Peter Schultz during an awards ceremony on May 8 at the Institute in Old City Philadelphia.
Schultz is a professor of chemistry, chief executive officer, and the Sam Skaggs Presidential Chair at Scripps Research. Schultz has made many seminal contributions to the fields of chemical and synthetic biology, including the development and application of methods to expand the genetic code of living organisms, the discovery of catalytic antibodies, and the development and application of molecular diversity technologies to address problems in chemistry, materials science, and medicine, including the first application of combinatorial libraries to catalyst/materials discovery. He has lead drug discovery efforts that have advanced over 20 programs into clinical development and/or to approval, from infectious disease to cancer and regenerative medicine.
Schultz earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees at the California Institute of Technology. After postdoctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley in 1985, where he was a chemistry professor, a principal investigator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. He joined Scripps Research in 1999 and was appointed chief executive officer in 2015.
Schultz has founded nine biotech/tech companies that have pioneered the development and application of new technologies to challenges in human health and materials science. In 1999 he founded the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation, serving as its director for more than 10 years. There he led the development and application of automated high throughput methods in drug discovery, genomics, and structural biology.
In 2012 he established Calibr, a nonprofit biomedical research institute designed as a new model to accelerate the discovery of innovative medicines, and which is now an operating division of Scripps Research. As CEO of Scripps, Schultz is pioneering a new model for the company that seamlessly bridges basic and translational research and creates a new model for funding nonprofit biomedical research.
The coauthor of more than 600 scientific publications, Schultz is active on many editorial and scientific advisory boards. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Additionally, he has trained over 300 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, many of whom are on the faculties of major research institutions around the world.
In recognition of his accomplishments, Schultz has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Wolf Prize in Chemistry, the Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation, the Solvay Prize, the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize, the Arthur C. Cope Award of the American Chemical Society, the Heinrich Wieland Prize, and the NAS Award in Chemical Sciences.
Previous Winners of the AIC Gold Medal
- K. Barry Sharpless (2023)
- Brian Hoffmann (2022)
- Peter J. Stang (2021)
- Henry F. Schaefer III (2019)
- E. Gerald Meyer (2018)
- Stephen Lippard (2017)
- Chad Mirkin (2016)
- Jacqueline Barton (2015)
- Ronald Breslow (2014)
- John D. Roberts (2013)
- Elizabeth Blackburn (2012)
- Dudley Herschbach (2011)
- Robert Grubbs (2010)
- Oliver Smithies (2009)
- Paul Berg (2008)
- Walter Gilbert (2008)
- George Whitesides (2007)
- Roald Hoffmann (2006)
- Robert L. McNeil Jr. (2005)
- Carl Djerassi (2004)
- Ralph Hirschmann (2003)
For a full list of winners of the AIC Gold Medal going back to 1926, visit the AIC’s website.
About the American Institute of Chemists
From its earliest days in 1923 to the present, the American Institute of Chemists has fostered the advancement of the chemical profession in the United States.
The AIC has a corresponding dedication “to promote and protect the public welfare; to establish and maintain standards of practice for these professions; and to promote the professional experience through certification as to encourage competent and efficient service.”
