The first issue of the 2006 Newslet­ter is avail­able at http://www.nacatsoc.org/nl/2006_01.pdf.
 
At the 2005 Board of Direc­tors Meet­ing, the Board agreed that in the future the Newslet­ter will be con­vert­ed to elec­tron­ic dis­tri­b­u­tion only. Start­ing with this issue, the Newslet­ter will be pro­duced in Adobe Acro­bat and post­ed on the NACS web site for view­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion. If you wish to receive a paper copy, please noti­fy Edrick Morales, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor, at commdirector@nacatsoc.org with your name and postal address. An e‑mail with the high­lights and a link to the newslet­ter will be sent to all NACS mem­bers in our dis­tri­b­u­tion list.

Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catalysis

 
The Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by Süd-Chemie, Inc. It is admin­is­tered by The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd num­bered years, gen­er­al­ly at the North Amer­i­can meet­ing of The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, where the awardee will be asked to give a ple­nary lec­ture. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $3,000. An addi­tion­al $500 is avail­able for oth­er­wise unre­im­bursed trav­el expens­es.

The pur­pose of the Award is to rec­og­nize and encour­age indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on the devel­op­ment of new and improved cat­a­lysts and process­es rep­re­sent­ing out­stand­ing advances in their use­ful appli­ca­tion.

Selec­tion of the Award win­ner wiil be made by a com­mit­tee of renowned sci­en­tists and engi­neers appoint­ed by the Pres­i­dent of The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. Selec­tion shall be made with­out regard for age, sex, nation­al­i­ty or affil­i­a­tion. Posthu­mous awards will be made only when knowl­edge of the awardee’s death is received after announce­ment of the Award Com­mit­tee’s deci­sion. Nom­i­na­tions for the Award should be made before July 1,2006 and should present the nom­i­nee’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions, accom­plish­ments and biog­ra­phy. A crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the sig­nif­i­cance of pub­li­ca­tions and patents should be made as well as a state­ment of the par­tic­u­lar contribution(s) on which the nom­i­na­tion is based. Nom­i­na­tion doc­u­ments should be sub­mit­ted in six copies to the Pres­i­dent of the Soci­ety along with no more than two sec­ond­ing let­ters.

All nom­i­na­tion pack­ages for the Houdry Award should be addressed to John Armor, Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety; 1608 Bark­wood Dr., Ore­field, PA 18069 USA .

Heinz Heine­mann, a long-time lec­tur­er in the Col­lege of Chem­istry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, and a chem­istry researcher at Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry, died Nov. 23 of pneu­mo­nia at Sib­ley Hos­pi­tal in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. He was 92. Dur­ing a 60-year career in indus­try and acad­e­mia, Heinz con­tributed to the inven­tion and devel­op­ment of 14 com­mer­cial fos­sil fuel process­es, received 75 patents and was the author of more than a hun­dred pub­li­ca­tions. Among his inven­tions was a process for con­vert­ing methanol to gaso­line. At his death, he was a dis­tin­guished sci­en­tist in the Wash­ing­ton office of LBNL. Dur­ing the peri­od 2001 to 2004, he served as a man­ag­er of the Wash­ing­ton Chem­i­cal Soci­ety (ACS) and as pres­i­dent of its Retired Chemists Group.

Born in Berlin, Ger­many, he attend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty and Tech­nis­che Hochschule in Berlin (Munich?). When his doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion was reject­ed because he was Jew­ish, he made his way to Basel, Switzer­land, where he received his PhD in phys­i­cal chem­istry from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Basel, before com­ing to the Unit­ed States in 1938. He became a U.S. cit­i­zen in 1944. He worked for sev­er­al petro­le­um com­pa­nies in Louisiana and Texas and won a post­doc­tor­al fel­low­ship at the then-Carnegie Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, now Carnegie-Mel­lon Uni­ver­si­ty. The fel­low­ship was fund­ed by the gov­ern­ment of the Domini­can Repub­lic and involved research into ethanol, which was made from the Domini­can Repub­lic’s pri­ma­ry cash crop, sug­ar cane.

He pub­lished more than 150 papers and over 50 patents in catal­y­sis and petro­le­um chem­istry, most­ly while work­ing for Houdry Process Corp., the MW Kel­logg Co. as direc­tor of chem­i­cal and engi­neer­ing research, and the Mobil Research and Devel­op­ment Co. as man­ag­er of catal­y­sis research. Dur­ing those years he active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in the research and devel­op­ment of 14 com­mer­cial process­es, includ­ing the process for con­vert­ing methanol to gaso­line.

After retir­ing from indus­try in 1978, he joined the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry as a researcher and became a lec­tur­er in the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at UC Berke­ley. His research involved coal gasi­fi­ca­tion, cat­alyt­ic coal liq­ue­fac­tion, hydro­den­i­tri­fi­ca­tion, nitro­gen oxide emis­sion con­trol and the devel­op­ment of a spe­cial cat­a­lyst that enables methane, the major com­po­nent of nat­ur­al gas, to be used to make petro­chem­i­cals. The research team he led invent­ed and patent­ed a process known as cat­alyt­ic oxy­de­hy­dro­gena­tion.

He was a co-founder of the Philadel­phia Catal­y­sis Club, the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of North Amer­i­ca and the Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress of Catal­y­sis, serv­ing as its pres­i­dent from 1956 to 1960. He was the founder of Catal­y­sis Reviews, and worked as its edi­tor for 20 years. He also was Con­sult­ing Edi­tor for over 90 books in the Chem­i­cal Indus­tries Series, pub­lished by Mar­cel Dekker, Inc.

He received many hon­ors, among them elec­tion to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing , the Houdry Award of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, the Mur­phree Award of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety, the H.H. Lowry Award pre­sent­ed for research he pur­sued in his sev­en­ties, and a Dis­tin­guished Scientist/Engineer award of the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy. In addi­tion, he was elect­ed a mem­ber of the Span­ish Coun­cil for Sci­en­tif­ic Research for his sup­port in found­ing its Insti­tute of Catal­y­sis and Petro­chem­istry.

He is sur­vived by his wife of 10 years, Dr. Bar­bara Tenen­baum of Wash­ing­ton, D.C.; daugh­ter Sue Heine­mann of Oak­land, Calif.; and son and daugh­ter-in-law Peter M. Heine­mann and Dana Kueffn­er of San Fran­cis­co. His first wife, Elaine P. Heine­mann, died in 1993 after 46 years of mar­riage.
 
Source: Decem­ber 6, 2005 Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley News (http://chemistry.berkeley.edu/Publications/news/fall2005/heinz_obit.html)

The Insti­tute for Inter­fa­cial Catal­y­sis (IIC) was launched at Pacif­ic North­west Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry in Feb­ru­ary 2005 as a cen­ter to study cat­alyzed chem­i­cal trans­for­ma­tions impor­tant for a secure ener­gy future. The Insti­tute was estab­lished to build and deploy, for the ben­e­fit of the research com­mu­ni­ty, new capa­bil­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly tools address­ing sin­gle site and operan­do catal­y­sis, that take advan­tage of rev­o­lu­tion­ary advances in nan­otech­nol­o­gy and high-per­for­mance com­put­ing. PNNL’s strong catal­y­sis port­fo­lio serves as the foun­da­tion for IIC’s inter­ac­tions and col­lab­o­ra­tions with fun­da­men­tal and applied sci­en­tists across the Nation and around the globe.

There is a wealth of infor­ma­tion on their resources at http://iic.pnl.gov/.

Each of the 4 NACS awards are announced every 2 years. The Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship Award is already open for nom­i­na­tions and will close on Novem­ber 30, 2005.

• Nom­i­na­tions for the Houdry Award will open May 2006, close August 1, 2006
• Nom­i­na­tions for the Emmett Award will open August 2006 and close Nov. 30, 2006
• Nom­i­na­tions for the Bur­well Lec­ture­ship will open Jan­u­ary 2007 and close April 1,2007

Details for sub­mit­ting nom­i­na­tions and the com­po­si­tion of the nom­i­na­tion pack­age on giv­en under the Awards fold­er for each award.
 
John Armor
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety

Nom­i­na­tions are now being accept­ed for the next Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis Award giv­en by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The award is described below.
 
The F.G. Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis is cospon­sored by Grace Davi­son, a busi­ness unit of W. R. Grace & Co and The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. The Soci­ety admin­is­ters this Lec­ture­ship. It is to be award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in even num­bered years. The Award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. An addi­tion­al $4,500 is avail­able to cov­er trav­el­ling expens­es. The hon­o­rar­i­um is pro­vid­ed com­plete­ly by Davi­son. The Award is giv­en in recog­ni­tion of sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions to one or more areas in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on indus­tri­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant cat­a­lysts and cat­alyt­ic process­es and the dis­cov­ery of new cat­alyt­ic reac­tions and sys­tems of poten­tial indus­tri­al impor­tance. The awardee will be select­ed on the basis of his/her con­tri­bu­tions to the cat­alyt­ic lit­er­a­ture and the cur­rent time­li­ness of these research con­tri­bu­tions. The recip­i­ent may be invit­ed to (1) vis­it and lec­ture to each of the affil­i­at­ed Clubs/Societies with which mutu­al­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry arrange­ments can be made and (2) pre­pare a review paper(s) for pub­li­ca­tion cov­er­ing these lec­tures. Pub­li­ca­tion will be in an appro­pri­ate peri­od­i­cal.

Nom­i­na­tions and sup­port­ing doc­u­ments (6 copies) must be sub­mit­ted before 30 Novem­ber 2005 to:
 
John N. Armor
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety
1608 Bark­wood Dr
Ore­field, PA 18069 USA
Phone: 610–395-1406
 
The nom­i­na­tion should include a cov­er let­ter by the nom­i­na­tor detail­ing the qual­i­fi­ca­tions of the nom­i­nee. At least 1–2 sec­ond­ing let­ters are help­ful. A copy of the resume of the nom­i­nee should be includ­ed and any oth­er rel­e­vant mate­r­i­al to sup­port the nom­i­na­tion. Selec­tion will be made in Decem­ber 2005-Jan­u­ary 2006.