Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson Award

The Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson Award is for outstanding contributions to pure or applied research in the field of organometallic chemistry.

Rules and Criteria

• Run biennially
• Open to everyone without restrictions
• Candidates are permitted to nominate themselves
• 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 1 September 2009 
• Nominations close 31 January 2010
• Award winner will be chosen by the Dalton Division Awards Committee
• Award winner receives £2000, a medal and a certificate 

About the Award

This award was established to recognise the life of and numerous scientific contributions made by Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson. This award was formerly known as the Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson Lectureship.

Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson graduated from Imperial College, London in 1941. He went on to work in the chemistry field in Montreal, Berkeley (CA), Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University until he returned to England in 1955. He was appointed chair of Inorganic Chemistry at Imperial College, London where he worked on the complexes of transition metals.

Well known for Wilkinson's catalyst, used in the hydrogenation of alkenes and for discovering the structure of ferrocene, he was also awarded a Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work on organometallic compounds in 1973. He died in 1996, aged 75.