Pittcon Heritage Award

Instrumentation dramatically transformed the power, pace, and impact of scientific research. New questions could be asked and answered. Research that once took years could be done in days. The Pittcon Heritage Award honors those visionaries whose entrepreneurial careers shaped the instrumentation and laboratory supplies community and by doing so have transformed the scientific community at large.

The award has been presented jointly with Pittcon since 2002 and is given out each year at a special ceremony during the Pittcon Conference and Expo. The recipient’s name and achievements are added to the Pittcon Hall of Fame, which conference attendees can visit at the show each year. The 2025 award will be presented at the conference being held March 1–5 in Boston.

2025 Awardee: Jeanette Grasselli Brown

Jeanette Grasselli Brown is an analytical chemist renowned for her contributions to the development of spectroscopy. She led method development during the introduction of FTIR spectroscopy, and later served as the president of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy, the editor of Vibrational Spectroscopy, and wrote a column for the journal Analytical Chemistry. During her career at Standard Oil of Ohio (now BP America), she rose from the laboratory bench to become director of corporate research, the first woman to hold that job and the only woman at the director level at the time of her appointment.

A child of Hungarian immigrants, Grasselli Brown grew up around Cleveland, Ohio. She earned a BS at Ohio University in 1950 and a master’s degree in chemistry in 1958 from what is now Case Western Reserve University. Beginning her career at SOHIO in 1950, she measured some of the first IR and Raman spectra for a number of chemicals spanning small molecule organics to large polymers. “I loved my research career, but I realized by moving into management I could help other women and other people around me,” she says [1]. She retired from BP in 1989.

Grasselli Brown holds one patent and has written more than 80 research articles and edited or co-edited chapters in nine books. Her contributions have been celebrated with 13 honorary degrees, including one from the University of Pecs in Hungary.

Grasselli Brown’s philanthropy and service have made her a powerful advocate for science and education. Among the many boards she has served on and chaired is the Board of Regents (the governing body for higher education) for the State of Ohio, where she served for 13 years, including two years as chair. She has supported science education in Cleveland as the founding chair of the research committee at Holden Arboretum and as a founding board member of the Great Lakes Museum Science Center. In 2013 she founded the Cleveland Water Alliance to develop sustainable solutions to regional and global freshwater challenges.

Previous Winners of the Pittcon Heritage Award

Pittcon Hall of Fame Inductees

All winners of the Pittcon Heritage Award are inducted into the Pittcon Hall of Fame. There they join the members of the special introductory class of instrumentation pioneers:

• Walter S. Baird
• John Townsend Baker
• C. Eugene Bennett and Aaron Martin
• Arnold O. Beckman
• Howard Cary
• Wallace Coulter
• Keene P. Dimick
• Charles Elmer and Richard S. Perkin
• Robert E. Finnigan
• Chester G. Fisher
• Maurice Hasler
• William Hewlett and David Packard
• J. O. Jarrell
• Frank Martinez Jr.
• Erhard Mettler
• Arthur H. Thomas
• Russell Varian and Sigurd Varian

The Science History Institute thanks the American Chemical Society, which granted permission to adapt the biographical information for these web pages, and Declan O’Reilly, former Charles Price Fellow in Polymer Chemistry at the Institute, for his contributions.

The Institute gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation for this undertaking and thanks the Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy for giving us the opportunity to be a partner in maintaining the Pittcon Hall of Fame.

About Pittcon

Pittcon is the largest and most inclusive conference and exposition on laboratory science and instrumentation in the world. The annual event brings together more than 30,000 conferees and exhibitors from more than 70 countries.