Gabor Somor­jai, pro­fes­sor of chem­istry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley (USA) has been named Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor. He becomes only the 23rd indi­vid­ual in the entire Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia sys­tem to be hon­ored with this pres­ti­gious title. Pre­vi­ous hold­ers of this dis­tinc­tion include Glenn T. Seaborg and Melvin Calvin. 

Gabor was also among a group of 15 recip­i­ents of the US Nation­al Met­al of Sci­ence. This is the high­est award for sci­ence and is pre­sent­ed by Pres­i­dent Bush. As Rita Col­well, direc­tor of the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion, said in 1998 “These are super­stars in their respec­tive fields. They’ve con­tributed a life­time of stun­ning dis­cov­er­ies. We can only rec­og­nize them once with a sci­ence medal, but we applaud them dai­ly for their con­tin­u­al con­tri­bu­tions to humankind, to the reser­voir of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge and for the impact they have on the stu­dents they men­tor and edu­cate along the way.”