Peter Stang, University of Utah, USA, will be awarded the National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honor bestowed by the United States government. The prize is awarded annually by the President to individuals deserving special recognition for their outstanding contributions to knowledge or the total impact of their work on the current state of the chemical, physical, biological, social or behavioral sciences, mathematics, or engineering.

Professor Stang will be recognized for his creative contributions to the development of organic supramolecular chemistry and for his outstanding and unique record of public service.

Stang grew up in Hungary, but moved to the United States after the 1956 Soviet invasion. He earned his doctorate at University of California, Berkeley, USA, in 1966 and joined the University of Utah faculty three years later. His research focuses on constructing supramolecular species by coordination and chelation and forming discrete molecular entities with well defined geometries and shapes, particularly polygons and polyhedra.

The other recipients of the 2011 National Medal of Science are:

• Jacqueline K. Barton, California Institute of Technology, USA
  For discovery of long-range electron transfer in the DNA helix and for showing that electron transfer depends upon stacking of the base pairs and DNA dynamics.
• Ralph L. Brinster, University of Pennsylvania, USA
  For his contributions to the development and use of transgenic mice.
• Shu Chien, University of California, San Diego, USA
  For his work in cardiovascular physiology and bioengineering.
• Rudolf Jaenisch, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
  For improving our understanding of epigenetic regulation of gene expression.
• Richard A. Tapia, Rice University, USA
  For his pioneering and fundamental contributions in optimization theory and numerical analysis.
• Srinivasa S.R. Varadhan, New York University, USA,
  For his work in probability theory, especially that on large deviations from expected random behavior.

President Barack Obama will award the medals to all the recipients later this year in a White House ceremony.