SUNCAT Director Awarded Danish Medal

Jens Nørskov, director of SLAC's SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis, has received the G.A. Hagemann Gold Medal for engineering scientific research from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). The presentation was made on May 3 at an annual university celebration attended by Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II of Denmark.

The citation lauded Nørskov "for his many contributions to engineering science, from the most fundamental scientific insights to practical designs and inventions. He has contributed with renewed insight in the quantum description of the properties of matter at the atomic and electronic level and to the definition of new theoretical methods and principles for the design of catalysts with applications in chemical production and environment and energy. The last part of his activity has also led to a number of patents and business start-ups."

A graduate of the University of Aarhus in Denmark, where he also received a PhD in theoretical physics, Nørskov was a professor at DTU from 1987 until 2010, when he moved to SLAC as founding director of the SUNCAT Center. He is the Leland T. Edwards professor of engineering and a professor of chemical engineering at Stanford University and a professor of photon science at SLAC. He was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2003, a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters in 1996 and a member of the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences in 1987. Nørskov received DTU’s Innovation Prize in 2005 and the University of Chicago's Mulliken Medal in 2007. Earlier this year, he received the Michel Boudart Award for the Advancement of Catalysis.

The G.A. Hagemann Gold Medal is named for Gustav Adolph Hagemann (1842-1916), a Danish chemist and industrialist (minerals and sugar processing) who graduated from DTU in 1865 and later directed the university.