As per our current Database, John Polanyi is still alive (as per Wikipedia, Last update: May 10, 2020).
Currently, John Polanyi is 95 years, 9 months and 30 days old. John Polanyi will celebrate 96rd birthday on a Thursday 23rd of January 2025. Below we countdown to John Polanyi upcoming birthday.
John Polanyi was born in the Year of the Snake. Those born under the Chinese Zodiac sign of the Snake are seductive, gregarious, introverted, generous, charming, good with money, analytical, insecure, jealous, slightly dangerous, smart, they rely on gut feelings, are hard-working and intelligent. Compatible with Rooster or Ox.
Awards and nominations:
Polanyi was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in chemical kinetics. He shared the prize with Dudley Herschbach of Harvard University and Yuan T. Lee of the University of California. The trio were honoured for "their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes." Polanyi's contributions were centred around the work he did developing the technique of infrared chemiluminescence. This technique was used to measure weak infrared emissions from a newly formed molecule in order to examine energy disposal during a chemical reaction. Polanyi's Nobel lecture upon receipt of the award was entitled "Some Concepts in Reaction Dynamics."
Polanyi had mixed feelings about the impact of the Nobel Prize on his research, feeling that his name on research proposals and papers often brought additional scrutiny, and also had people questioning his dedication to science after the honour. Polanyi said, "There is a very reasonable suspicion that you are so busy doing the things that Nobel Prize winners do that you are actually only giving half your mind to science."
His Nobel victory also signaled a change in his research direction. The 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Ernst Ruska, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer for their work in electron microscopes and scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM). This research piqued Polanyi's interest while he was in Sweden for the ceremony. After returning to Toronto, Polanyi and his colleagues looked into the technique and now have four STMs, which they use to picture chemical reactions at the molecular level, rather than using infrared detection and chemiluminescence.
Polanyi's Nobel medal is on display at Massey College (University of Toronto) where he is also a Senior Fellow.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1971. In 1974, Polanyi was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 1979, he was promoted to Companion. He has received many other awards throughout his career, including the Marlow Medal of the Faraday Society in 1962, Centenary Medal of the British Chemical Society in 1965, the Steacie Prize for Natural Sciences in 1965 (shared), the Noranda Award of the Chemical Institute of Canada in 1967, the Henry Marshall Tory Medal of the Royal Society of Canada in 1977, the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 1982 (shared), the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Prize in 1988, the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 1989, and the John C. Polanyi Lecture Award of the Canadian Society for Chemistry in 1992. In 2007, Polanyi was awarded the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering. The Royal Society of Chemistry honoured Polanyi as their 2010 Faraday Lectureship Prize.
Polanyi has received many honorary degrees from 25 institutions, including Waterloo in 1970, Harvard University in 1982, Ottawa in 1987, and Queen's in 1992. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry of the United Kingdom and the Chemical Institute of Canada.
Polanyi was pictured on a Canada Post first class postage stamp on 3 October 2011, issued to salute the International Year of Chemistry. In 1992, Polanyi was appointed to the Queen's Privy Council of Canada.
In honour of Polanyi's Nobel Prize win, the Ontario government established the "John Charles Polanyi Prizes". These prizes are each worth $20,000, and are awarded to young researchers in the province in a postdoctoral fellowship or who have recently started a faculty appointment at an Ontario University. The prizes are awarded in similar categories to the Nobel Prizes, broadly defined as: Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Economics and Literature.
Canada's Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) created the John C. Polanyi award to recognize a researcher or researchers whose work in an NSERC-supported field has led to an outstanding advance in the field. The research must have been conducted in Canada, and have been at least partially supported by NSERC funding. The award consists partially of a $250,000 grant for the winner. The inaugural winner of the John C. Polanyi Award was the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. In 2011, the award was presented to Victoria M. Kaspi, an astrophysicist at McGill University.
Polanyi started publishing his scientific research in 1953. As of 2010, he has published over 250 scientific papers. His writing is not limited to his scientific interests, as he has published over 100 articles on policy, the impact of science on society and armament control. In 1970, he produced a film entitled Concepts in Reaction Dynamics, and he co-edited a book called The Dangers of Nuclear War.
In 2010, the Toronto District School Board voted to change the name of Sir Sandford Fleming Academy to the John Polanyi Collegiate Institute to coincide with a move to a new location. The new school opened in September 2011.