We are pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Charles Camp­bell of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton is the recip­i­ent of the 2013 Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, spon­sored by John­son Matthey and admin­is­tered by The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. It is to be award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd-num­bered years. The award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2015 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. An addi­tion­al $4,500 is avail­able to cov­er trav­el­ing expens­es in North Amer­i­ca. Pro­fes­sor Camp­bell will present lec­tures at the local catal­y­sis clubs and soci­eties dur­ing the two-year peri­od cov­ered by this award. 

The Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis is giv­en in recog­ni­tion of sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions to one or more areas in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on dis­cov­ery and under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na, cat­alyt­ic reac­tion mech­a­nisms and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and descrip­tion of cat­alyt­ic sites and species.

Pro­fes­sor Camp­bell is being rec­og­nized for bridg­ing the gap between sur­face sci­ence and catal­y­sis, for devel­op­ing new con­cepts and tools in both dis­ci­plines, and for his ser­vice to both com­mu­ni­ties as Edi­tor-in-Chief of Sur­face Sci­ence. His knowl­edge and his con­tri­bu­tions over the last three decades have encom­passed enor­mous depth and breadth. He has made sem­i­nal con­tri­bu­tions in (1) devel­op­ing meth­ods to mea­sure sur­face bond ener­gies, specif­i­cal­ly calorime­try using an appa­ra­tus devel­oped by his research group and which cur­rent­ly ranks as the most sen­si­tive heat detec­tion tool for the study of mod­el cat­a­lysts; (2) accu­rate mea­sure­ments of the bind­ing of met­al atoms and nanopar­ti­cles to oxides, which has led to mech­a­nis­tic approach­es and fun­da­men­tal treat­ments of cat­a­lyst sin­ter­ing; (3) advanc­ing and using micro­ki­net­ic treat­ments of cat­alyt­ic reac­tions, espe­cial­ly by pro­vid­ing many clas­sic exam­ples of how sur­face sci­ence can con­tribute to the under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic mech­a­nisms; and (4) for­mal­iz­ing the con­cept of ‘the degree of rate con­trol’ to assess the extent to which indi­vid­ual steps in a cat­alyt­ic sequence lim­it reac­tions rates.
 
Enrique Igle­sia, Pres­i­dent,
 
Bruce Cook, Vice President
North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety