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NACS News
1/22/2006
James C. Stevens is the recipient of the ACS award in Industrial Chemistry
James C. Stevens, a research fellow at Dow Chemical in Freeport, Texas, is the recipient of the ACS award in Industrial Chemistry for discovery and commercial development of catalysts used in the polyolefin production. This award recognizes outstanding contributions to chemical research in the industrial context.
His work on designed ligands for titanium- and zirconium-based catalysts led to the discovery of the "single-site, constrained-geometry catalyst system" in the late 1980s. Stevens and his colleagues refined the technology, transforming it "from a lab curiosity to a commercial reality" for the production of polyolefins. More recently, his collaboration with Symyx Technologies led to the discovery of a new class of hafnium-based single-site catalysts for the polymerization of propylene. Stevens holds 75 patents and his work have resulted in commercial success for Dow. The catalysts he helped to develop are used in the production of more than 1 billion pounds of plastics and elastomers per year.
Tobin J. Marks, a catalysis chemistry professor at Northwestern University, says Stevens is "the kind of superb industrial scientist and technologist who comes along only once in a generation." Marks adds that Stevens' work "has permanently changed the face of modern polymerization science, and has led to a number of multi-billion-dollar processes that produce cleaner, greener, more recyclable, and more processible polymeric materials than ever believed possible. Moreover, due to Stevens' incisive work, the intimate mechanistic details of catalyst function are understood at a level never before thought possible for an industrial olefin-polymerization catalyst."
Recipients:
1991 James F. Roth
1992 David R. Bryant
1993 Larry F. Thompson
1994 Marion D. Francis
1995 Lynn H. Slaugh
1996 Gordon W. Calundann
1997 Robert M. Sydansk
1998 William C. Drinkard, Jr.
1999 Madan M. Bhasin
2000 Guido Sartori
2001 Paul S. Anderson
2002 Bipin V. Vora
2003 Bruce E. Maryanoff
2004 Joseph C. Salamone
2005 Edwin A. Chandross
2006 James C. Stevens
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