ACS National Awards: Nomination Guidelines
Nominations for Awards
Any individual, except a member of the award committee or a Board member during their terms of service on the Board, may submit only one nomination or one support form for each award in any given year. In nomination by petition, the person whose signature is first will be considered as the nominator and the endorsements that follow will be disregarded.
Required: A completed with a recommendation of not more than 1,000 words evaluating the nominee’s accomplishments and a specific identification of the work to be recognized. A biographical sketch, including date of birth, and contact information (phone, fax and email). A list of publications and patents by the nominee, an analysis of patents is especially valuable.
When nominating for the ACS Award for Creative Invention, a copy of the patent must be submitted with the nominating documents.
Optional: No more than two containing factual information not given in the nomination form may be included.
Presentation of Awards
The ACS national awards recognize individual or team accomplishments in diverse fields of the chemical sciences. The presentation of ACS national awards is an annual feature of the ACS spring national meeting. Customarily, the names of the recipients are announced soon after the preceding ACS fall national meeting. Each recipient is required to appear in person to receive the award and to deliver an award address on the scientific work that is being recognized. Customarily, the award address will be given at a session of an appropriate division. These requirements will be waived only under extraordinary circumstances.
Posthumous Awards
Posthumous awards will be made only when knowledge of the individual's death is received after the recipient has been announced. Nominations of individuals known to be deceased will not be accepted.
Sharing of Awards
Although nominations of more than one individual for an award are acceptable, the sharing of an award will be permitted only in exceptional cases and then only on prior approval of the sponsor and of the ACS Board Committee on Grants and Awards.
Multiple Awards
Should the same individual be chosen for two or more awards in any one year, the President and the President-Elect, in consultation with such members of the Society as they may choose, decide which award or awards will be given to that individual and, should one or more of the awards be withheld, to designate as recipient of any withheld award the second choice of the award selection committee.
Eligibility
In general, a recipient of a widely recognized scientific award is not eligible for an ACS national award unless the accomplishment cited as the basis for the nomination represents new or different work. An individual who has received an ACS National award may be nominated for a different ACS award if (1) the nomination is for clearly different work from the previous award. (the letter of nomination for the award must address the differences between the work performed for the previous ACS award and that which is addressed in the current nomination packet) or (2) at least five years has elapsed since the previous ACS award was received (this “five-year” rule is waived for the preceptor (s) of the students who are eligible to receive the Nobel Laureate Signature Award for Graduate Education in Chemistry). Certain ACS national awards are given for broad, career-long achievements, and nominations for these awards may be exempt from this recommendation.