About the Award
The NAS Award in Chemical Sciences is presented annually to honor innovative research in the chemical sciences that contributes to a better understanding of the natural sciences and to the benefit of humanity. The award is presented with a medal and a $15,000 prize.
Peter G. Wolynes, Rice University, will receive the 2025 NAS Award in Chemical Sciences.
Wolynes’s landmark contributions to theoretical chemical physics shed light on problems ranging from quantum dynamics to protein folding, the nature of the glassy state, and chromosome structure.
Wolynes has developed mathematical tools to explore the chemical dynamics of complex systems. His work on the formulation and development of a statistical framework to describe complex energy landscapes resolved many paradoxes concerning how glasses form and how proteins fold. In addition to enhancing our ability to manipulate protein function, his work provides strategies to understand important aspects of human diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
He has recently applied energy landscape theory and its associated simulation technologies to address a wide range of biological problems on the cellular scale, including issues surrounding the DNA transcription code, gene regulatory dynamics, the structural dynamics of the cytoskeleton and the structure of the chromosome.
Wolynes will be honored in a ceremony on Sunday, April 27 during the National Academy of Sciences’ 162nd annual meeting. The ceremony will be livestreamed.
Award History
The NAS Award in Chemical Sciences was established in 1978 and supported by Occidental Petroleum Corporation from 1978 to 1996. The Merck Company Foundation assumed sponsorship in 1999. The NAS Award in Chemical Sciences was first awarded in 1979 to Linus Pauling for his studies, which elucidated in structural terms the properties of stable molecules of progressively higher significance to the chemical, geological, and biological sciences.
Previous recipients of the NAS Award in Chemical Sciences continue to achieve outstanding advancements in their fields. Twenty-six recipients have been honored with a National Medal of Science, and 12 recipients have received a Nobel Prize in Chemistry (Pauling 1954; Taube 1983; Hoffmann 1981; Brown 1979; Cram 1987; Zewail 1999; Sharpless 2001 and 2022; Corey 1990; Bertozzi 2022; Doudna 2020; Brus 2023), and Peace Prize (Pauling 1962).
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