Centenary Prize 2011 Winner

Awarded for his groundbreaking work on polypyrrolic systems in the areas of supramolecular and medicinal chemistry.

About the Winner

Professor Jonathan L. Sessler was born in Urbana, Illinois, USA on May 20, 1956.

Professor Sessler:

• received a BS degree (with Highest Honors) in chemistry in 1977 from the University of California, Berkeley
• obtained a PhD in organic chemistry from Stanford University in 1982 (supervisor: Professor James P. Collman)
• was a NSF-CNRS and NSF-NATO Postdoctoral Fellow with Professor Jean-Marie Lehn at L'Université Louis Pasteur de Strasbourg, France
• and was then a JSPS Visiting Scientist in Professor Tabushi's group in Kyoto, Japan. 

In September 1984 he accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is currently the Roland K Pettit Chair. Dr Sessler has authored or coauthored over 500 research publications, written two books (with Dr Steven J. Weghorn and Drs Philip A Gale and Won-Seob Cho, respectively), edited another book (with Drs Susan Doctrow, Tom McMurry, and Stephen J Lippard), and been an inventor of record on more than 75 issued US Patents. His H-index is 71. 

Dr Sessler is a co-founder (with Dr Richard A Miller) of Pharmacyclics, Inc., a publicly traded company (pcyc; NASDQ) dedicated to developing biomedical applications of expanded porphyrins.

In conjunction with Dr Martin R Johnson, Dr Sessler has recently co-founded a second company, Anionics, Inc., that is targeting various commercial opportunities of anion recognition chemistry. 

In addition to English, Dr Sessler speaks French, Spanish, German, and Hebrew and can get by in Japanese and Italian. He is currently learning Korean.