The Russell Varian Prize 2008

The Russell Varian Prize honors the memory of the pioneer behind the first commercial Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectrometers and co-founder of Varian Associates. The prize is awarded to a researcher based on a single innovative contribution (a single paper, patent, lecture, or piece of hardware) that has proven of high and broad impact on state-of-the-art NMR technology. The prize aims to award the initial contribution that laid the ground for the specific technology of great importance in state-of-the-art NMR. It is sponsored by Varian Inc. and carries a monetary award of 15,000 Euro. The award ceremony will take place at the EUROMAR 2008 in St. Petersburg, Russia, July 6-11, 2008.

Rules for the Russell Varian Prize

• Only single pieces of work are considered (a paper, a lecture, a patent, etc).

• In case of multiple authorship, the prize is awarded to the author with the largest creative and innovative share of the contribution. Only in exceptional cases of truly equal shares can the prize be split between two authors of the same contribution.

• No individual can receive the prize more than once.

• Prize winners become members of the Advisory Board for the Russell Varian Prize that evaluates future nominations and makes recommendations to the Prize Committee.

Call for Nominations

Nominations must be forwarded by email to the Secretary of the Prize Committee, Vladimir Sklenář, at sklenar@chemi.muni.cz. The deadline for nominations is February 1, 2008. Nominations should be laid out in the format of a publishable laudatio proposal (cf. earlier laudatios at  www.euromar.org) that in case of multiple authorship must include an outline of why the nominee is the most innovative author behind the paper. Attention is further drawn to the fact that the Russell Varian Prize awards the earliest seed paper of an important technology rather than later more comprehensive and highly quoted papers.

Prize Committee 2008

Advisory Board for the Russell Varian Prize

Former Russell Varian Prize Laureates

Jean Jeener, Professor Emeritus, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium (2002):

• Technology: Multidimensional Fourier NMR spectroscopy and imaging.

• Awarded contribution: The lecture given at the Ampere Summer School in Basko Polje, Yugoslavia, September, 1971, where Jean Jeener introduced two-dimensional Fourier NMR spectroscopy by what is today known as the COSY experiment.

Erwin Hahn, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley, USA (2004):

• Technology: Basics of modern time-domain NMR spectrometers, spin-echo phenomena and experiments, diffusion measurements, and J couplings.

• Awarded contribution: Bull. Am. Phys. Soc. 24, No. 7, 13 (1949), reprinted in Phys. Rev. 77, 746 (1950).

Nicolaas Bloembergen, Professor of optical sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA, and Gerhard Gade University Professor Emeritus, Division of Applied Science and Physics Department, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts USA (2005).

• Technology: NMR relaxation for experimental study of molecular motion.

• Awarded Contribution: Nuclear Magnetic Relaxation, by N. Bloembergen, E. M. Purcell, and R. V. Pound, Nature, 160, 475-476, (1947).

John S. Waugh, Professor Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (2006)

• Technology: Average Hamiltonian Theory

• Awarded contribution: J.S. Waugh, C.H. Wang, L.M. Huber, and R.L. Vold, “Multiple-Pulse NMR Experiments”, J. Chem. Phys. 48, 662-670 (1968). This paper announces further results that appeared a few weeks later in J. S. Waugh, L. M. Huber, and U. Haeberlen, "Approach to High-Resolution NMR in Solids", Phys. Rev. Lett. 20, 180-182 (1968).