News Release

ACS congratulates member and journal author who is 2009 Nobel medicine winner

Grant and Award Announcement

American Chemical Society

WASHINGTON, Oct.5, 2009 — The American Chemical Society (ACS) today congratulated its long-standing member and journal author Jack W. Szostak, Ph.D., who was selected as a winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

"Dr. Szostak's selection is a wonderful illustration of chemistry's connections to other sciences, especially medicine," said Thomas H. Lane, Ph.D., president of ACS, which has more than 154,000 members and is the world's largest scientific organization. "The knowledge and creativity of ACS members like Dr. Szostak foster innumerable advances in medicine and other fields of science that range quite literally from astronomy to zoology."

Lane noted that Szostak has been an ACS member for almost 20 years, and has published extensively in ACS's suite of 34 peer-reviewed scientific journals. At least five of his research groups' 11 major publications so far in 2009 have been in ACS journals. They include the Journal of the American Chemical Society and the Journal of Physical Chemistry.

Szostak is with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Harvard University. Lane extended congratulations to the other distinguished scientists who shared the prize. They are Elizabeth H. Blackburn, University of California-San Francisco, and Carol W. Greider, of Johns Hopkins University. The trio were honored for discovering how an enzyme called telomerase helps to protect cells against the effects of aging.

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The American Chemical Society — the world's largest scientific society — is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. With more than 154,000 members, it is the world's largest scientific society. ACS's main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.


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