On June 12, 2024, Professor Sarah Tolbert was awarded the American Chemical Society Southern California Section’s (SCALCS) highest honor, the 2023 Richard C. Tolman Award Medal, in recognition of her groundbreaking research in nanoscience and materials chemistry.
Faculty, students, alumni, and staff attended the Richard C. Tolman Award dinner at the UCLA Faculty Club. A photo gallery from the event can be viewed here and select photos can be viewed below.
After dinner, Dr. Veronica Jaramillo, Chair Elect of the Southern California Section of the American Chemical Society, presented the Tolman Award to Tolbert, who then gave her Tolman address. In her address, she discussed her many collaborative research projects at UCLA, and then presented more detail on her work on fast charging batteries.
The Tolman Medal is named in honor of Richard C. Tolman, a pioneering chemist at Caltech during the first half of the 20th century, who made key discoveries on electrons, among other significant scientific findings. Tolman Medal recipients include eight Nobel Prize winners, two from UCLA. The first Tolman Medal was awarded in 1960 to UCLA Chemistry & Biochemistry Professor William G. Young in 1960 for whom Young Hall is named.
In addition to Young, other UCLA Chemistry & Biochemistry faculty to be honored with the Tolman Medal are Francis E. Blacet (1968), Robert L. Pecsok (1970), Howard Reiss (1973), Herbert D. Kaesz (1980), Paul D. Boyer (1981), Donald J. Cram (1984), M. Frederick Hawthorne (1986), Christopher S. Foote (1995), Kendall N. Houk (1998), Fred Wudl (2005), Joan S. Valentine (2008), Richard B. Kaner (2009), Michael Jung (2015), Paul S. Weiss (2016), and Jeffrey I. Zink (2017).
Photos by Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry.
