Othmer Gold Medal
The Othmer Gold Medal is the Science History Institute’s preeminent award. Winners are chosen for their extraordinary contributions to the material sciences and are honored each spring.
Founded in 1997, the medal is named after Donald Othmer (1904–1995), a noted researcher, consultant, editor, engineer, inventor, philanthropist, professor, and coeditor of the Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology. The roster of past winners includes some of the most versatile and multitalented individuals in the scientific community.
The Othmer Gold Medal is cosponsored by the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Chemists’ Club, and the American Section of the Société de Chimie Industrielle.
2025 Medalist: Graham Cooks
The 2025 Othmer Gold Medal will be presented to R. Graham Cooks during the Science History Institute Awards ceremony on Wednesday, May 7 at the Institute in Old City Philadelphia.
R. Graham Cooks joined the faculty at Purdue University in 1971 and is currently the Henry Bohn Haas Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, a post he has held since 1990. He is also codirector of Purdue’s Center for Analytical Instrumentation Development and the former director of the university’s Mass Spectrometry Center.
Cooks is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (2015), the National Academy of Inventors (2014), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2010). He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Robert Boyle Medal (2009), the American Chemical Society’s Cotton Medal for Excellence in Chemical Research (2012), the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Prize in the Chemical Sciences (2013), and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Mass Spectrometry & Advances in the Clinical Lab (2024).
With more than 1,700 published research articles, Cooks ranks among the 100 most cited chemists in the world. He has made significant contributions to surface science, cancer diagnostics, molecular homochirality, and chemical reactivity at interfaces through a series of key discoveries that have transformed mass spectrometry from an analytical to a synthetic method, and extended its impact in direct mixture analysis. The highly sought-after lecturer holds 176 U.S. patents and has trained more than 150 PhD graduates in chemistry.
Cooks received a BSc (1961), MSc (1963), and a PhD (1965) from the University of Natal in South Africa, and a second PhD from Cambridge University in 1967.
Previous Winners of the Othmer Gold Medal
- Paula Hammond (2024)
- Geraldine Richmond (2023)
- Jay Keasling (2022)
- Dame Carol Robinson (2021)
- Sangeeta Bhatia (2019)
- Joshua Boger (2018)
- Richard Zare (2017)
- Mukesh Ambani (2016)
- Phillip Sharp (2015)
- Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (2014)
- Harry Gray (2013)
- Marye Anne Fox (2012)
- Kazuo Inamori (2011)
- George Whitesides (2010)
- Ahmed Zewail (2009)
- Yuan Tseh Lee (2008)
- Thomas R. Cech (2007)
- Ronald C. Breslow (2006)
- James D. Watson (2005)
- Jon M. Huntsman (2004)
- George S. Hammond and John D. Baldeschwieler (2003)
- Robert S. Langer (2002)
- Gordon E. Moore (2001)
- Arnold Beckman, Special Millennium Edition (2000)
- Carl Djerassi (2000)
- P. Roy Vagelos (1999)
- Mary Lowe Good (1998)
- Ralph Landau (1997)
