The Tolman Medal is awarded each year by the Southern California Section of the American Chemical Society in recognition of outstanding contributions to chemistry. These contributions may include: achievements in fundamental studies; achievements in chemical technology; significant contributions to chemical education; outstanding leadership in science on a national level. The nominee must have been a Southern California resident when most of the award-related accomplishments were made, but need not currently reside here.

The Tolman Award Committee now seeks nominations for the 2004 award. Nominations are accepted from any member of this Section or of cooperating Sections. A list of winners appended here demonstrates the caliber of awardee sought by the committee. Please send your nominations and supporting data to:

Nominations must be received by December 15, 2004. The nomination package should include five sets of:

• an up-to-date resume of the nominee; 
• letters of support from colleagues in the profession; 
• copies of representative publications, including papers, patents, patent applications, and descriptions of books of which the nominee is the principal author; 
• if the nominee is being considered for outstanding teaching, letters of support from former students should also be included. 

List of Prior Tolman 
Medal Recipients

1960 William G. Young
1961 Anton B. Burg
1962 Ernest H. Swift
1963 W. Conway Pierce
1964 A.J. Haagen-Schmidt
1965 Thomas Doumani
1966 Arthur W. Adamson
1967 Ulrich B. Bray
1968 Francis E. Blacet
1969 Robert D. Vold
1970 Robert L. Pecsok
1971 Roland C. Hansford
1972 James Bonner
1973 Howard Reiss
1974 John D. Roberts
1975 Corwin Hansch
1976 F.Sherwood Rowland*
1977 Sidney W. Benson
1978 Thomas C. Bruice
1979 Harry B. Gray
1980 Herbert D. Kaesz
1981 Paul D. Boyer*
1982 Donald T. Sawyer
1983 James N. Pitts
1984 Donald C. Cram*
1985 Arnold O. Beckman
1986 M. Frederick Hawthorne
1987 Clifford A. Bunton
1988 John D. Baldeschwieler
1989 Mostafa A. El-Sayed
1990 Linus Pauling*
1991 George A. Olah*
1992 Peter C. Ford
1993 Charles L. Wilkins
1994 Jacqueline K. Barton
1995 Christopher S. Foote
1996 Larry R. Dalton
1997 Ahmed Zewail*
1998 Kendall Houk
1999 Peter Dervan
2000 William Goddard III
2001 Peter Renzepis
2002 Robert H. Grubbs
2003 Arieh Warshel
2004 Christopher Reed


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*Nobel Laureate

Richard Chase Tolman, for whom the Tolman Award was named, was born March 4, 1881 in West Newton, Massachusetts. Early in his career, he demonstrated that the electron was the charge-carrying particle in metals and determined its mass, but he was known later primarily as a theorist. He was professor of Physical Chemistry and Mathematical Physics at Caltech, and, in the words of Thomas Hager in his fine biography of Linus Pauling, in the 1920s Tolman epitomized the spirit of the graduate program: clear, critical, and focused on the cutting edge of research. Caltech had been founded in 1919, by Hale, Millikan, and Noyes. In 1922, the 21-year old Linus Pauling came from Oregon to do graduate work in chemistry, and was introduced to quantum theory by Tolman (to the Bohr-Sommerfeld theory, since this was before the introduction of ‘wave mechanics’).

Tolman wrote a tome on Statistical Mechanics, and taught that subject to generations of Caltech students, but he was probably best known for his masterful treatise "Relativity, Thermodynamics, and Cosmology", the lectures which first introduced many students to tensors, as well as to some of the mysteries of general relativity.  The final paragraph of that formidable work illustrates well Tolman’s style, character and philosophy:

"It is appropriate to approach the problems of cosmology with feelings  of respect for their importance, of awe for their vastness, and of exultation for the temerity of the human mind in attempting to solve them. They must be treated, however, by the detailed, critical, and dispassionate methods of a scientist."

And that is the way those privileged to have listened to him remember him. He was a superbly organized and thoughtful lecturer, who insisted on having the lecture room to himself for the hour before his lecture. When the students arrived, the board would be covered with a neat and logical outline of his lecture. He would be sitting on a stool at the front, puffing on his pipe, and would start lecturing. As he spoke, and one wondered "How can that be?", it usually turned out that the next topic he turned to, outlined on the board, gave the answer. He often engaged students in discussion and there were many brilliant students in his classes.

Although Tolman was the senior chemistry faculty member after A.A. Noyes’ death in 1936, he was by then really more concerned with cosmology than with physical chemistry.  He was not interested in administration, so Linus Pauling, then in his mid-thirties, became the Chairman of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. During WWII, Tolman was chief science advisor to General Leslie Groves, who supervised the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. After the war, he worked on the peaceful uses of atomic energy and control of nuclear weapons as chief advisor to Bernard Baruch, the US representative to the UN’s Atomic Energy Commission. Richard Tolman died in Pasadena on September 5, 1948.