Conference History

The Polanyi medal is awarded every two years, at the International Symposium on Gas Kinetics. The recipient is chosen by the Committee of the Gas Kinetics Group of the Faraday Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and is someone who has made outstanding contributions to the field of Gas Kinetics. Below is a summary of past recipients, with links to additional information on their contributions to gas kinetics.

Symposium

	Year	Symposium Location	Polanyi Award Recipient
0^th	1967	Swansea, UK
1^st	1969	Szeged, Hungary
2^nd	1971	Swansea, UK
3^rd	1973	Brussels, Belgium
4^th	1975	Heriot-Watt, UK
5^th	1977	UMIST
	1979		Richard Zare *	Stanford University, USA
6^th	1980	Southhampton, UK
	1981		Dudley Herschbach	Harvard University, USA
7^th	1982	Göttingen, Germany	Brian Thrush	University of Cambridge, UK
8^th	1984	Nottingham, UK	B. S. Rabinovitch	University of Washington, USA
9^th	1986	Bordeauz, France	Sid Benson	University of Southern California, USA
	1987		Fred Kaufmann (posthumously)	University of Pittsburg, USA
10^th	1988	Swansea, UK	John Polanyi	University of Toronto, Canada
11^th	1990	Assisi, Italy	Ian W. M. Smith	University of Birmingham, UK
12^th	1992	Reading, UK	Jurgen Troe	University of Göettingen, Germany
13^th	1994	Dublin, Ireland	Michael J. Pilling	University of Leeds, UK
14^th	1996	Leeds, UK	John Simons	University of Oxford, UK
15^th	1998	Bilbao, Spain	A. R. Ravishankara	National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, USA
16^th	2000	Cambridge, UK	Jürgen Wolfrum	University of Heidelberg, Germany
17^th	2002	Essen, Germany	Gus Hancock	University of Oxford, UK
18^th	2004	Bristol, UK	David Clary	University of Oxford, UK
19^th	2006	Orleans, France	Horst Hippler	Karlsruhe University, Germany
20^th	2008	Manchester, UK	Piergiorgio Casavecchia	University of Perugia, Italy
21^st	2010	Leuven, Belgium	Stephen R. Leone	University of California at Berkley, USA
22^st	2012	Boulder, Colorado	Mario Molina	University of California, San Diego, USA
23^st	2014	Szeged, Hungary	Craig Taatjes	Sandia National Laboratory, USA
24^st	2016	York, UK	James Anderson	Harvard, USA

* Medal awarded at Faraday Discussion 67, "Kinetics of State Selected Species", in Birmingham, 1979.

The Polanyi medal is named after Professor Michael Polanyi, 1891-1976, whose research helped to define the modern subject of gas kinetics and reaction dynamics. A native of Hungary, Polanyi received his PhD from Budapest University in 1917, on the subject of thermodynamics of adsorption. After working in Berlin, Polanyi emigrated to England in 1933 to become Professor of Physcial Chemistry at Manchester University, a position he held until 1948, when he moved to philosophy and became Professor of Social Science, also at Manchester.

In 1959 he bacame a Senior Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford. Polanyi published over 200 scientific papers between 1916-1948 on a wide range of topics: adsorption, reaction kinetics, x-ray diffraction to name a few. Polanyi's laboratory at Manchester attracted students and established scientists from all over the world. After the 2^nd world war, Polanyi increasingly turned his attention from science to economics and Philosophy. His son, John Polanyi, was a recipient of the Polanyi Medal in 1988.

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