Prize Recipient


Recipient Picture

Karl Freed
University of Chicago

Citation:

"For outstanding theoretical contributions to the fundamental understanding of the statistics of isolated chains, polymer dynamics, phase behavior of blends, and equilibrium polymerization."

Background:

Karl Freed received a BS in chemical engineering from Columbia University in 1963, an AM (1965) in physics and a PhD (1967) in chemical physics at Harvard University, and then was a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow (1967 – 68) in the Department of Theoretical Physics, Manchester University, Manchester, England before joining the James Frank Institute and Department of Chemistry, where her currently is the Henry G. Gale Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus, and a Senior Fellow in the Computation Institute. His current research interests include the influence of monomer molecular structure on glass-formation in polymers and the miscibility of polymer blends, equilibrium self-assembly and dynamics, solvation of polymers, proteins, and nucleic acids, the prediction of protein structure and the folding pathways without use of machine learning or homology, refinement of protein structures, and modeling the unfolded state of proteins. He has held Sloan, Guggenheim and Dreyfus Foundation Fellowships and is the recipient of the 1976 American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry and the 1973 Marlow Medal from the Faraday Society. Freed is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Physical Society and is a member of the Biophysical and American Chemical Societies.


Selection Committee:

Karen Winey, Chair; N. Balsara; S. Cheng; R. Colby; M. Muthukumar