Mitsuo Sawamoto to receive the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry (19 October 2016)

Professor Mitsuo Sawamoto of Kyoto University's Graduate School of Engineering will receive the 2017 Benjamin Franklin Medal in chemistry from the Franklin Institute in the United States. (He will share the award with Krzysztof Matyjaszewski of Carnegie Mellon University.)

The Franklin Institute Award is one of the oldest and most prestigious science and technology awards in the world, and Professor Sawamoto is the first Japanese to receive the award in the field of chemistry. Past award recipients have included Thomas Edison, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawkings, and Bill Gates, while winners from Japan in other divisions have included Sumio Iijima, Shuji Nakamura, Masatoshi Koshiba, and Yoichiro Nambu.

The work for which Professor Sawamoto received this award entailed the development of a new polymerization process involving metal catalysts. He was the first in the world to use a unique metal catalyst to achieve precision radical polymerization, which was for many years thought to be impossible. He thereby established a general theory of precision polymerization while at the same time paving the way for the precision synthesis of finely structured polymers. By doing so, he made pioneering contributions to the precision synthesis of various polymer materials that are useful for industrial and medical applications.

The award ceremony will be held on 4 May 2017 (US Eastern Standard Time) at the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States. The ceremony will be preceded by a symposium, public lectures, and other events, to be held on 1-4 May.