Frances H. Arnold, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2018

Frances Hamilton Arnold (born July 25, 1956) is an American chemical engineer and Nobel Laureate. She is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In 2018, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for pioneering the use of directed evolution to engineer enzymes.

Arnold is the daughter of Josephine Inman (née Routheau) and nuclear physicist William Howard Arnold, and the granddaughter of Lieutenant General William Howard Arnold. She grew up in Pittsburgh suburb Edgewood, and Pittsburgh neighborhoods of Shadyside and Squirrel Hill, graduating from the city's Taylor Allderdice High School in 1974. As a high schooler, she hitchhiked to Washington, D.C. to protest the Vietnam War and lived on her own working as a cocktail waitress at a local jazz club and a cab driver.

Career

After earning her Ph.D., Arnold completed postdoctoral research in biophysical chemistry at Berkeley. In 1986, she joined the California Institute of Technology as a visiting associate. She was promoted to assistant professor in 1986, associate professor in 1992, and full professor in 1996. She was named the Dick and Barbara Dickinson Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry in 2000 and, her current position, the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry in 2017. In 2013, she was appointed director of Caltech's Donna and Benjamin M. Rosen Bioengineering Center.

She is co-inventor on over 40 US patents. She co-founded Gevo, Inc., a company to make fuels and chemicals from renewable resources in 2005. In 2013, she and two of her former students, Peter Meinhold and Pedro Coelho, cofounded a company called Provivi to research alternatives to pesticides for crop protection. She has been on the corporate board of the genomics company Illumina Inc. since 2016.

In 2019, she was named to the board of Alphabet Inc., making Arnold the third female director of the Google parent company.

Personal life

Arnold lives in La Cañada Flintridge, California. She was married to James E. Bailey who died of cancer in 2001. They had a son named James Bailey. Arnold was herself diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005 and underwent treatment for 18 months.

Arnold married Caltech astrophysicist Andrew E. Lange in 1994, and they had two sons, William and Joseph. Lange committed suicide in 2010 and one of their sons, William Lange-Arnold, died in an accident in 2016.

Her hobbies include traveling, scuba diving, skiing, dirt-bike riding, and hiking.

Honors and awards

Arnold's work has been recognised by many awards, including the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the 2011 National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Draper Prize (the first woman to receive it), and a 2011 National Medal of Technology and Innovation. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011 and inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014. She was the first woman to be elected to all three National Academies in the United States – the National Academy of Engineering (2000), the National Academy of Medicine, formerly called the Institute of Medicine (2004), and the National Academy of Sciences (2008).

Arnold is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Microbiology, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and an International Fellow of the UK's Royal Academy of Engineering in 2018.

In 2016 she became the first woman to win the Millennium Technology Prize, which she won for pioneering directed evolution. In 2017, Arnold was awarded the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in Convergence Research by the National Academy of Sciences, which recognizes extraordinary contributions to convergence research.

• 2019, Pope Francis Named member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (2019).
• Honorary Doctorate, Technical University of Denmark (2019)
• Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2018)
• Elected an International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (2018)
• Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in Convergence Research (2017)
• Spiegelman Lecture, University of Illinois (2017)
• Society of Women Engineers' 2017 Achievement Award
• Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science from Dartmouth College (2017)
• Honorary Doctorate, University of Chicago (2016)
• Millennium Technology Prize (2016)
• Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science from the ETH Zurich (2015)
• Elmer Gaden Award, Biotechnology and Bioengineering (2015)
• Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2014)
• Golden Plate Award, American Academy of Achievement (2014)
• Emanuel Merck Lecture of the Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany (2013)
• ENI Prize in Renewable and Nonconventional Energy (2013)
• Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science from the Stockholm University (2013)
• Charles Stark Draper Prize (2011)
• National Medal of Technology and Innovation (2011)
• American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2011)
• Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science from Stockholm University (2013)
• Elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2010)
• Elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (2009)
• Elected to the National Academy of Sciences (2008)
• FASEB Excellence in Science Award (2007)
• Enzyme Engineering Award from Engineering Conferences International and Genencor (2007)
• Francis P. Garvan–John M. Olin Medal, American Chemical Society (2005)
• Elected fellow of American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (2001)
• National Academy of Engineering (2000)