About the 2009 Heritage Day Award Recipients

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Ahmed Zewail
Othmer Gold Medal

A pioneer in chemical physics, Ahmed Zewail created the new field of femtochemistry, the study of matter on the femtosecond (10^-15 second) timescale, which makes it possible to observe atoms in motion and the transition states of chemical transformations. The primary goal of his research since is to further understand the complexity of such transformations. Zewail is also devoted to enhancing public awareness of the value of fundamental research and helping developing populations through the promotion of science and technology.

Zewail completed his early education in Egypt and received B.S. and M.S. degrees in chemistry from Alexandria University. He obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1974, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1976 he joined the faculty at the California Institute of Technology, where he is now a professor of physics, the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemistry, and director of the Physical Biology Center for Ultrafast Science and Technology.

In the late 1980s, Zewail developed a method for viewing the motion of atoms and molecules based on new laser technology that produced light flashes just tens of femtoseconds in duration. Many had thought it impossible to study the events that constitute a chemical reaction, but Zewail’s discovery enabled scientists to gain more insight into and control over a reaction’s outcome. For his studies using femtosecond spectroscopy, Zewail received the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Zewail has received numerous other awards and honors, including the Albert Einstein World Award of Science, the Benjamin Franklin Medal, the Robert A. Welch Award, the Leonardo da Vinci Award, the Wolf Prize, the King Faisal Prize, and the Order of the Grand Collar of the Nile. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences; the American Philosophical Society; the American Academy of Achievement; the European Academy of Arts, Sciences, and Humanities; the Royal Society of London; the French Academy; the Russian Academy; the Pontifical Academy; and the Royal Swedish Academy of the Sciences. He has received honorary degrees from 33 universities around the world.

Oliver Smithies
AIC Gold Medal

During his exceptional career, Oliver Smithies fundamentally changed the science of genetic medicine and laid the foundation for current research into gene therapy through two major innovations. One of these, his co-discovery of gene targeting through homologous recombination in embryonic stem cells, advanced the effective treatment of many diseases and led to Smithies sharing the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2007.

Smithies was born in 1925 in Yorkshire, England. He won a scholarship to Oxford University, where he earned a B.A. with first-class honors in physiology in 1946 and a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1951. As a researcher working at the Connaught Medical Research Laboratories of the University of Toronto between 1953 and 1960, Smithies greatly improved gel electrophoresis, a process of separating proteins to identify genes, by using starch. His innovation simplified the procedure and became a standard practice in laboratories.

In 1960 Smithies joined the laboratory of genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was there that he made groundbreaking discoveries concerning embryonic stem cells and DNA recombination in mammals, which led to the creation of gene targeting, an immensely powerful technology now applied to virtually all areas of biomedicine. His laboratory was also the first to develop mouse models for such diseases as cystic fibrosis, thalassemia, hypertension, and atherosclerosis. In 1988 Smithies became the Excellence Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Smithies has received numerous other awards and honors, including the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal, the Wolf Prize, the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, and the Gairdner Foundation International Award. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences; the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and the Royal Society of London.

David and Alice Schwartz

For almost 60 years, David and Alice Schwartz have served as models of entrepreneurship and innovation. The company they cofounded originally to create and sell tobacco mosaic virus, Bio-Rad Laboratories, has evolved into a global enterprise that manufactures and distributes products to more than 85,000 customers in the life science research and clinical diagnostics markets.

David Schwartz grew up in Brooklyn, New York. After serving in World War II as part of the Army Signal Corps, he moved to California’s San Francisco Bay Area to attend college. He first met Alice in a class at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a degree in chemistry and she earned a degree in biochemistry. During a student bridge game in 1952, the couple happened upon the idea to start a company that would accelerate the scientific discovery process by providing useful products to researchers. With about $700 of their own money and some additional funds from a cousin, they launched Bio-Rad.

While the Schwartzes’ first product, tobacco mosaic virus, did not take off, they soon developed more marketable research products that resulted in the company’s tremendous growth. Today Bio-Rad employs over 5,000 people in an international network of operations, with headquarters in Hercules, California. The firm is renowned worldwide among hospitals, universities, and major research institutions, as well as biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. It has maintained the entrepreneurial spirit of its cofounders and done pioneering work in electrophoresis, DNA amplification, chromatography, multiplexing assays, nucleic acid and protein quantitation, and protein expression. Recently Bio-Rad has grown to over $1.4 billion in revenues.

David Schwartz currently serves as chairman of Bio-Rad, while Alice is a director. He has received a Pittcon Heritage Award and an Ernst and Young Lifetime Achievement Award.

Zsolt Rumy
The Chemists' Club's Winthrop-Sears Medal

Zsolt Rumy has been a leader in the carbon fiber industry for more than 20 years. He founded Zoltek Companies in 1975 with a second mortgage on his home, and in 1988 he entered the carbon fiber business with the goal of producing and marketing carbon fibers as a low-cost but high-performance reinforcement for composites used as primary building materials in everyday commercial products. As chairman, president, and CEO of Zoltek, Rumy continues to guide the firm’s successful growth today.

Rumy was born in 1942 in Budapest, Hungary. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, his family immigrated to the United States, settling in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the following year. Rumy received a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1966 and later conducted postgraduate studies in business administration at Loyola University and St. Louis University. Before starting his own business he worked at Monsanto Company, W. R. Grace and Company, and General Electric Company.

Zoltek began as an industrial equipment and services company. It entered the carbon fibers industry through an acquisition in 1988 and began manufacturing aerospace carbon fibers from inexpensive, textile-type acrylic fibers, which reduced the cost and price of this strong, lightweight material to a level that allowed for commercial and industrial applications. Upon becoming the worldwide leader in rated capacity for making low-cost, high-performance carbon fiber through a proprietary continuous carbonization process, Zoltek has worked with various industries—including oil, automobile, and alternative energy—to open new applications and markets made possible by the ready availability of inexpensive carbon fibers.

Rumy currently serves on the Entrepreneurship Council of Washington University and the board of directors of Southwest Bank. He was instrumental in establishing the World Trade Center of St. Louis, serving as its first chairman and as a director. He previously served on the boards of Webster University and Liberty Mutual Insurance and is a former president of the St. Louis County Economic Development Council. Rumy was named Missouri’s Small Business Person of the Year in 1992 and St. Louis’s High Technology Entrepreneur of the Year in 1996.