Robin Clark to receive inaugural Franklin-Lavoisier Prize

PHILADELPHIA, PA—22 January 2009—The Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) and the Fondation de la Maison de la Chimie are pleased to announce that Robin J. H. Clark will be the recipient of the inaugural Franklin-Lavoisier Prize on Wednesday, January 28, 2009, at the Fondation de la Maison de la Chimie in Paris. Clark is the Sir William Ramsay Professor of Chemistry at University College London and the pioneer in the use of raman microscopy for pigment identification on art and artifacts. The award will be presented at the Chimie et Art conference at the Fondation de la Maison de la Chimie.

"Using raman microscopy to identify pigments in paint has helped document the provenance, age, and authenticity of artifacts ranging from Yale University's Vinland Map to Vermeer's Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, all without damage to the artifacts," said Thomas R. Tritton, president and CEO of CHF. "Curators around the world can breathe more easily knowing whether the Vermeer they have on the wall is authentic or not, and because no samples had to be removed for identification."

Robin J. H. Clark is Sir William Ramsay Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and former Dean of Science at University College London. He studied at the Universities of Canterbury and Otago and received a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry at University College London. His research in inorganic chemistry and spectroscopy—more recently on metal-metal bonded complexes; mixed-valence chemistry; infrared, Raman and resonance Raman spectroscopy; matrix isolation spectroscopy; spectroelectrochemistry; and pigment studies mainly by Raman microscopy—has led to the publication of more than 500 scientific papers, 3 books, and 36 edited books.

Clark has held visiting professorships in 11 countries and has lectured at over 350 universities and institutions in 36 countries throughout the world. He has served on many national committees, including the councils of the Royal Society, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, University College London, and the Senate of the University of London. He has chaired the Steering Committee of the International Conferences on Raman Spectroscopy.

In 1989 Clark was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. He was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and a member of the Academia Europaea in 1990, a Fellow of University College London in 1992, an Honorary Life Fellow of the Royal Institution of Great Britain in 2004, and a Foreign Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India, in 2007. He received an honorary D.Sc. from the University of Canterbury in 2001 and, in 2004, he was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to science. In 2008 he gave the Bakerian lecture, the Royal Society's premier annual Prize Lecture in the physical sciences.

Created in 2008, the Franklin-Lavoisier Prize is jointly awarded by the Fondation de la Maison de la Chimie (FMC) and the Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF). Named for Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and Benjamin Franklin, two of the 18th century's greatest minds, this prize recognizes unusually meritorious efforts in the preservation or promotion of the entwined scientific heritage of France and the United States.

La Maison de la Chimie was founded in 1928, in Paris, with the goal of building and maintaining a central meeting and working space to promote the popularization of science and was organized for the service of chemists worldwide. To fulfill this mission, la Maison de la Chimie provides a number of services and activities to facilitate cooperation between all those working to promote chemistry as one of the basic disciplines of science and technology.

The Chemical Heritage Foundation serves the community of the chemical and molecular sciences, and the wider public, by treasuring the past, educating the present, and inspiring the future. CHF carries out a program of outreach and interpretation in order to advance an understanding of the role of the chemical and molecular sciences, technologies, and industries in shaping society; maintains a world-class collection of materials that document the history and heritage of the chemical and molecular sciences, technologies, and industries; and encourages research in its collections.