Framed Nobel Prize posters are now on display to honor the remarkable achievements of distinguished chemists and biochemists closely affiliated with UCLA and our department. The majority of these posters can be viewed in the Mol Sci 5241 conference room, with the Cram and Heck posters located in the Cram Conference room (Mol Sci 3440).
The posters are part of Professor Ken Houk’s collection, which he amassed over 30 years as his collaborators have won the Nobel Prize. Houk has 55 publications with 15 different Nobel Laureates, including Bertozzi and Sharpless, the 2022 Nobelists. All Nobel Laureates in the collection, except Warshel, Levitt, and Karplus, who are showcased as computational chemical biologists, have published with Houk. Additionally, Houk’s other Nobel Prize-winning collaborators include R. B. Woodward (Houk’s Ph.D. mentor), Roald Hoffmann, and Robert Grubbs, with whom he co-authored 18 papers.
Four UCLA Chemistry & Biochemistry faculty members have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Willard Libby (’60), Donald Cram (’87), Paul Boyer (’97), J. Fraser Stoddart (’16).
Among UCLA Chemistry and Biochemistry alumni, notable Nobel laureates include: Glenn T. Seaborg (’51), who earned his B.S. in ’34; R. Bruce Merrifield (’84), who graduated with a B.S. in ’43 and a Ph.D. in ’49; and Richard Heck (’10), who graduated with a B.S. in ’50 and a Ph.D. in ’54.
Many of our faculty members have been mentored by or have collaborated with Nobel Laureates, and a plaque in Mol Sci 5241 cites many of these UCLA-Nobel collaborations. Ten Nobel Laureates have received the department’s prestigious Glenn T. Seaborg Medal; Carolyn Bertozzi (’22), Richard Henderson (’18), Stefan Hell (’15), Harold Varmus (’12), Richard Heck (’11), Richard Smalley (’02), Paul Boyer (’98), R. Bruce Merrifield (’93), Donald Cram (’89), Glenn T. Seaborg (’87).
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penny@chem.ucla.edu.
