Jeremy Knowles Award

The Jeremy Knowles Award is to recognise and promote the importance of inter- and multi-disciplinary research between chemistry and the life sciences

Rules and Criteria

• Run annually
• Candidates are permitted to nominate themselves
• Candidates must be in their mid-career, i.e. aged 55 or under.  The age specified is intended to guide nominators and selection panelists; appropriate consideration will be given to those who have taken career breaks or followed different study paths
• One page CV for the candidate which should include their date of birth, website URL, summary of education and career, a list of 5 relevant publications, total numbers of publications and patents
• A one page supporting statement addressing the selection criteria
• Nominations open on 1 September 2009 
• Nominations close on 31 January 2010 
• Prize winner will be chosen by the RSC Chemistry Biology Interface Forum Awards Committee
• Award winner receives £2000, a medal and a certificate   

About the award

The RSC Jeremy Knowles Award (previously advertised as the Chemical Biology Interface Forum Mid-Career Award) was established in 2008.

This award commemorates the contributions of Jeremy Randall Knowles to the science community.

Knowles obtained his First Class Honours degree in Physical Organic Chemistry from Oxford. It was early in his career when his interests drifted from traditional organic chemistry to understanding protein catalysis at the atomic level using principles and methods of physical organic chemistry. It was not long before he became an international leader in the field.

Upon moving to Harvard, his research thrived and expanded to include aspects from the chemical end of the spectrum to distinctly biological topics. He provided the first direct evidence for the importance of the hypervariable regions of the immune system's antibodies.

Knowles' work also gave rise to the first complete description of the energetics of an enzyme-catalyzed reaction and that the enzyme had reached the limit of catalytic efficiency.

Knowles was also very popular with undergraduate and postgraduate science students. He was appointed Dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences where he led the Faculty with distinction and made many improvements to teaching and research.