Kenneth G. Hancock Memorial Award
Sponsored by the ACS Division of Environmental Chemistry and the National Institute of Standards & Technology
About the Kenneth G. Hancock Award
The Kenneth G. Hancock Memorial Award honors outstanding student contributions to furthering the goals of green chemistry through research or education. The winners receive national recognition for their work.
Nominations Accepted
The ACS invites nominations that describe the technical, human health, and environmental benefits of a student study or research project.
- The award program is open to all college-level students (undergraduate and graduate).
- Nominations received for the award are judged by a panel convened by the ACS Green Chemistry Institute®.
- Two awards are given annually, one to an undergraduate student (or early graduate student) and one to a graduate student.
An Early Proponent of Green Chemistry
One of the earliest proponents of green chemistry and "the environmentally benign chemical synthesis and processing" approach was Dr. Kenneth G. Hancock, Director of the Division of Chemistry at the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Dr. Hancock was an active advocate emphasizing the role of chemists and chemistry not only in solving environmental problems of the past, but more importantly, in avoiding environmental problems in the future in an economically viable fashion. It was therefore a great loss to the advancement of green chemistry when Dr. Hancock died unexpectedly while attending an environmental chemistry conference in Eastern Europe in the fall of 1993.
Honoring Kenneth G. Hancock
Dr. Hancock's colleagues from academia, government, and industry have come together to award an annual Kenneth G. Hancock Memorial Award in green chemistry, offered under the auspices of the American Chemical Society Division of Environmental Chemistry.
- The Hancock Award is presented in conjunction with the annual ceremony for the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Awards.
- In 2006, the ACS Division of Environmental Chemistry and the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) expanded the award.