George McClelland Whitesides

George M. Whitesides is an American chemist and professor of chemistry at Harvard University. He is best known for his work in the areas of NMR spectroscopy, organometallic chemistry, molecular self-assembly, soft lithography, microfabrication, microfluidics, and nanotechnology. Whitesides is also known for publishing his "outline system" for writing scientific papers. As of December 2011, he has the highest Hirsch index rating of all living chemists. He received an A.B. degree from Harvard University in 1960 and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1964.

Awards and achievements

Whitesides is the author of more than 1200 scientific articles and is listed as an inventor on at least 134 patents. He ranked 5th on Thomson ISI's list of the 1000 most cited chemists from 1981 to 1997, and 38th on the list from 2000 to 2010. According to the Hirsch index, a ranking which combines number of articles published and citations of those articles by others, he was the most influential living chemist in 2011.

Whitesides has co-founded over 12 companies with a combined market capitalization of over $20 billion. These companies include Genzyme, GelTex, Theravance, Surface Logix, Nano Terra, and WMR Biomedical. Whitesides has mentored more than 300 graduate students, postdocs, and visiting scholars. He serves on the editorial advisory boards of several scientific journals, including ACS Nano, Angewandte Chemie, Chemistry & Biology, and Small.

Whitesides is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Engineering. He is also a fellow of the the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Philosophical Society.

Other awards:

• 1995: the Arthur C. Cope Award.
• 1998: American Chemical Society's ACS Award in Pure Chemistry.
• 1998: the National Medal of Science.
• 2002: Foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
• 2003: the Kyoto Prize in Materials Science and Engineering.
• 2004: the Gabbay Award.
• 2005: the Dan David Prize.
• 2005: the Welch Award in Chemistry.
• 2007: the AIC Gold Medal.
• 2007: the Priestley Medal, the highest honor conferred by the ACS.
• 2009: the Dreyfus Prize in the Chemical Sciences from The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation.
• 2009: the Reed M. Izatt and James J. Christensen Lectureship.
• 2009: the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry by The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
• 2010: the Othmer Gold Medal for outstanding contributions to progress in chemistry and science.
• 2011: the F. A. Cotton Medal for Excellence in Chemical Research of the American Chemical Society.
• 2011: the King Faisal International Prize in Chemistry.
• 2013: the IRI Medal alongside Robert S. Langer.
• 2013: the inaugural Patrusky Lecture.
• 2017: the Lifetime Achievement award by Xconomy.
• 2022: the Kavli Prize in Nanosciences.

Personal life

Whitesides and his wife, Barbara, have two sons, George T. and Ben. George Thomas Whitesides was CEO of Virgin Galactic, a firm developing commercial space vehicles. Ben Whitesides is lead singer and songwriter of The Joggers, a rock band based in Portland, Oregon.