L’Oréal and UNESCO honor women in science

Five leading scientists from different continents have been honored as part of an effort to recognize the contributions of outstanding women researchers to scientific progress and to encourage their participation in research.

The ninth annual L’Oréal–UNESCO Awards for Women in Science were distributed in February during a ceremony in Paris. Three of the laureates are involved in physics-related work.

Mildred Dresselhaus was selected as the North American laureate “for her research on solid state materials, including conceptualizing the creation of carbon nanotubes.” Dresselhaus is Institute Professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics at MIT and chair of the Governing Board of the American Institute of Physics.

This year’s laureate for Latin America is Ligia Gargallo. Chosen “for her contributions to understanding solution properties of polymers,” Gargallo is a professor of physical chemistry at Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in Santiago. The awards jury noted that Gargallo’s work “helps drug designers visualize how new compounds will interact with enzymes in the body and opens the door to the rational design of synthetic enzymes.”

Tatiana Birshtein was named the 2007 laureate for Europe “for her contribution to the understanding of the shapes, sizes and motions of large molecules.” The jury wrote that Birshtein has helped to “shed new light on the self-organizing properties of many remarkable polymeric systems essential to plastics used in soft-drink bottles, plastic bags and other familiar materials such as nylon, rayon, Styrofoam, Plexiglas and Teflon.” Birshtein is a professor at the Institute of Macromolecular Compounds in the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.

The awards alternate each year between the life sciences and materials science (including physics and chemistry) and are accompanied by a cash prize of $100 000.