Speaker Biographies Ahmed Zewail currently is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology, and Director of the NSF Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (LMS). In 1999, Zewail was the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Alexandria University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. After completing his Ph.D., he went to the University of California, Berkeley, as an IBM research fellow. Dr. Zewail was appointed to the faculty at Caltech in 1976, and in 1990 was appointed as the first Linus Pauling Chair at the Institute. He holds honorary degrees from the American University, Cairo, Oxford University, Katholieke University (Leuven, Belgium), University of Pennsylvania, and Université de Lausanne. He has served as visiting professor at many universities around the world. Dr. Zewail's honors include the Robert A. Welch Prize Award, Wolf Prize, King Faisal Prize, Benjamin Franklin Medal, Leonardo Da Vinci Award of Excellence, Bonner Chemiepreis, Medal of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Carl Zeiss Award, Hoechst Award, and the Alexander von Humboldt Award. From the American Physical Society, he was awarded the Herbert P. Broida Prize and the Earle K. Plyler Prize, and from the American Chemical Society, the Nichols Medal, Linus Pauling Medal, E. Bright Wilson Award, and the Buck-Whitney Medal. From the National Academy of Sciences, the Chemical Sciences Award and from Yale University, the J.K. Kirkwood Award. In 1995 he received the Order of Merit, first class. He was an Alfred P. Sloan fellow, Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, and John Simon Guggenheim fellow. Dr. Zewail is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Third World Academy of Science, European Academy of Arts, Sciences and Humanities, and Fellow of the American Physical Society. Linus Carl Pauling, Jr. is Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine. Dr. Pauling was engaged in the private practice of psychiatry for over thirty years. He received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1952. Dr. Pauling has served on numerous boards, including the Hawaii Mental Health Association (1957-62), the Hanahauoli School Board of Trustees, Hawaii (1960-96), the Foundation for Nutritional Advancement, Washington, D.C. (1976-87), and the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii (1980-82). Dr. Pauling is affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Psychiatric Association, and the Harvard Medical Alumni Association. Robert J. Paradowski is currently a Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He holds a B.S. from Spring Hill College, a M.A. from Brandeis University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Paradowski's dissertation was on The Structural Chemistry of Linus Pauling. He is presently working on the offical biography of Linus Pauling. Jack D. Dunitz studied chemistry at Glasgow University (Ph.D. 1947), and held research fellowships at Oxford University (1946-1948, 1951-1953), the California Institute of Technology (1948-1951, 1953-1954), the U.S. National Institute of Health, Bethesda MD (1954-1955), and the Royal Institution, London (1956-1957), before taking up a professorship at the ETH-Zürich, a post that he held until his retirement in 1990. He has held Visiting Professorships in the United States, Israel, Japan and the United Kingdom, has been elected to membership of several learned societies, and has received several awards for his work. He has written more than 300 scientific papers and is the author of 'X-Ray Analysis and the Structure of Organic Molecules' (Cornell University Press, 1979; Verlag HCA, Basel, 1995) and 'Reflections on Symmetry in Chemistry...and Elsewhere' (with E. Heilbronner, Verlag HCA, Basel, 1993). Thomas Hager is a science writer, biographer, editor, Assistant Professor and Director of the Office of Communications at the University of Oregon. Hager has written three books -- Aging Well (Fireside Press 1991); Force of Nature: The Life of Linus Pauling (Simon and Schuster 1995); and Linus Pauling and the Chemistry of Life (Oxford University Press 1998) -- as well as more than 100 feature magazine articles for publications ranging from Reader's Digest to the Medical Tribune. He founded LC Magazine, a trade publication for scientists, in 1983, and for ten years edited Oregon Quarterly, the magazine of the University of Oregon. Lily E. Kay received a Ph.D. in the history of science from the Johns Hopkins University in 1987, and was a recipient of a Smithsonian Fellowship at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. in 1984. She was an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in bibliography at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, and has taught at the University of Chicago. Formerly an Assistant Professor of History of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she is now associated with the staff of Harvard University. Back to homepage