The Anselme Payen Award is an annual prize named in honor of Anselme Payen, the French scientist who discovered cellulose, and was a pioneer in the chemistry of both cellulose and lignin.
In 1838,Payen A., Memoire sur la composition du tissu propre des plantes et du ligneux, Comptes Rendus, 7: 1052-1056, (1838). he discovered that treating successively wood with nitric acid and an alkaline solution yielded a major insoluble residue that he called "cellulose", while dissolved incrustants were later called "lignin" by Frank Schulze.Schulze F., Beitrage zur Kenntniss des Lignins, Chemisches Zentralblatt, 21:321-325 (1857). He was the first to attempt separation of wood into its component parts. After treating different woods with nitric acid he obtained a fibrous substance common to all which he also found in cotton and other plants. His analysis revealed the chemical formula of the substance to be C6H10O5.
He reported the discovery and the first results of this classic work in 1838 in Comptes Rendus. The name "cellulose" was coined by him, and this was introduced into the scientific literature next year, in 1839.Payen A., Composition de la matière ligneuse, Comptes Rendus, 8: 51-53, (1839).
Anselme Payen Award RecipientsThe Anselme Payen Award, which includes a medal and an honorarium given by the American Chemical Society's Cellulose and Renewable Materials Division, to honor and encourage "outstanding professional contributions to the science and chemical technology of cellulose and its allied products". The Anselme Payen Award is an international award and any scientist conducting cellulose and cellulose related research is eligible for nomination. Selection of the awardee is based upon an evaluation of the nomination packages submitted on behalf of potential awardees. These documents are individually ranked by a panel of nine judges who are appointed by the current Chair-Elect and are unknown to each other. Three judges rotate off the panel each year. The identity of all members is known only to the Chair of the awards committee who compiles the results. After the awardee accepts, the Chair of the Awards Committee announces the winner at the next Spring ACS meeting. The awardee for that year is honored at the following Spring ACS meeting at a Symposium and Banquet. The award bears the year the winner was announced. It is presented the following year to allow time for organization of the Symposium and Banquet.
Recipients
Year Awardee Institution 1962 Louis Elsberg Wise The Institute of Paper Chemistry 1963 Clifford Burroughs Purves McGill University 1964 Harold Morton Spurlin Hercules 1965 Carl Johan Malm Eastman Kodak 1966 Wayne A. Sisson American Viscose 1967 Roy L. Whistler Purdue University 1968 Alfred J. Stamm USDA Forest Products Lab 1969 Stanley Mason McGill University 1970 Wilson A. Reeves USDA, ARS, Southern Regional Research Center 1971 Tore E. Timell SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry 1972 Conrad Schuerch SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry 1973 D. A. I. Goring McGill University 1974 Vivian Thomas Stannett North Carolina State University 1975 J. K. N. Jones Queens University 1976 Robert H. Marchessault University of Montreal 1977 W. Kyle Ward, Jr. The Institute of Paper Chemistry 1978 W. Howard Rapson University of Toronto 1979 Kyosti V. Sarkanen University of Washington 1980 Olof Samuelson Chalmers University of Technology 1981 Stanley P. Rowland USDA, ARS, Southern Regional Research Center 1982 Erich Adler Chalmers University of Technology 1983 Reginald D. Preston Leeds University 1984 Jett C. Arthur, Jr. USDA, ARS, Southern Regional Research Center 1985 Orlando A. Battista The O. A. Battista Research Institute 1986 R. Malcolm Brown, Jr. The University of Texas at Austin 1987 Takayoshi Higuchi Kyoto University 1988 Bengt Ranby Royal Institute of Technology 1989 Anatole Sarko SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry 1990 Junzo Nakano University of Tokyo 1991 Henri Chanzy CERMAV, Grenoble 1992 Josef Gierer KTH Royal Institute of Technology 1993 Derek Gray Paprican, McGill University 1994 Geoffrey N. Richards University of Montana 1995 Josef Gratzl North Carolina State University 1996 S. Haig Zeronian University of California, Davis 1997 Joseph L. McCarthy University of Washington 1998 Rajai H. Atalla USDA Forest Products Laboratory 1999 John Blackwell Case Western Reserve University 2000 Wolfgang G. Glasser Virginia Tech 2001 Liisa Viikari VTT Biotechnology 2002 R. St. John Manley McGill University 2003 Deborah P. Delmer The Rockefeller Foundation 2004 Dieter Klemm Friedrich Schiller University Jena 2005 Peter Zugenmaier Clausthal University of Technology 2006 Charles Buchanan Eastman Chemical Company 2007 Fumitaka Horii Kyoto University 2008 Fumiaki Nakatsubo Kyoto University 2009 Alfred D. French USDA, ARS, Southern Regional Research Center 2010 Thomas Heinze Friedrich Schiller University of Jena 2011 Lina Zhang Wuhan University 2012 Hans-Peter Fink Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research 2013 John Ralph University of Wisconsin-Madison 2014 Thomas Rosenau University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna 2015 Akira Isogai University of Tokyo 2016 Kevin Edgar Virginia Tech 2017 Junji Sugiyama Kyoto University 2018 Orlando Rojas Aalto University 2019 Ann-Christine Albertsson KTH Royal Institute of Technology 2020 Run-Cang Sun Dalian Polytechnic University 2021 Yoshiharu Nishiyama CNRS and Grenoble Alpes University 2022 Christoph Weder Adolphe Merkle Institute and University of Fribourg 2023 Lars Berglund KTH Royal Institute of Technology 2024 Lars Wågberg KTH Royal Institute of Technology 2025 Liangbing Hu Yale University 2026 Antje Potthast University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna
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