Pro­fes­sor Gabor Somor­jai of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley was select­ed as the ACS Priest­ley Medal Awardee for 2008. The Priest­ley Medal is the high­est hon­or of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety (ACS) and is named for Joseph Priest­ley, who report­ed the dis­cov­ery of oxy­gen in 1774. Gabor is receiv­ing this award, which will be pre­sent­ed at the spring 2008 ACS nation­al meet­ing, “for extra­or­di­nar­i­ly cre­ative and orig­i­nal con­tri­bu­tions to sur­face sci­ence and catal­y­sis.” Wide­ly rec­og­nized by his peers as the father of mod­ern sur­face sci­ence, he has authored more than 1,000 sci­en­tif­ic papers and three text­books on sur­face chem­istry and het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, and has men­tored more than 300 Ph.D. stu­dents and post­doc­tor­al fellows.