Accomplishments and Awards

For over one hundred years, Carnegie science has benefited humankind directly and indirectly in countless way. Among the more widely-known of the institution's accomplishments and awards are the following:

  • Edwin Hubble, who revolutionized astronomy with his discovery that the universe is expanding and that there are galaxies other than our own Milky Way;
  • Charles Richter, who created the earthquake measurement scale;
  • Barbara McClintock, who won the Nobel Prize for her early work on patterns of genetic inheritance;
  • Alfred Hershey, who won the Nobel Prize for determining that DNA, not protein, harbors the genetic recipe for life;
  • Vera Rubin, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Science for her work confirming the existence of dark matter in the universe; and
  • Andrew Fire, who with colleagues elsewhere opened up the world of RNA interference, for which he shared a Nobel Prize in 2006

Yet, these are only a few notable examples among many others, such as the following represented in recent news releases.

  • Carnegie scientists Chris Field and Ken Caldeira of the Department of Global Ecology were key contributors in the UN panel sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for work on global climate change.
  • Former Carnegie Academy for Science Education (CASE) director Inés Cifuentes was awarded the 2007 Hispanic Heritage Award for Math and Science.
  • The Department of Plant Biology's Winslow R. Briggs, was awarded the 2007 Adolph E. Gude, Jr., Award, established by the American Society of Plant Biologists and given triennially in recognition of outstanding service to the science of plant biology.
  • In 2007 the American Geophysical Union awarded Carnegie's Ho-kwang (Dave) Mao the Inge Lehmann Medal for "outstanding contributions to the understanding of the structure, composition, and dynamics of the Earth's mantle and core."
  • Carnegie astronomer Mark Phillips shared the 2007 Cosmology Prize of the Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation for his role in discovering that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.
  • Paul Silver, a geophysicist at Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism in Washington, DC, was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007.
  • The National Academy of Sciences awarded Carnegie president emerita Maxine F. Singer the Public Welfare Medal in 2007, the academy’s most prestigious honor.
  • The Lasker Foundation awarded Carnegie Department of Embryology’s Joseph G. Gall the prestigious 2006 Lasker Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science.
  • Christopher Somerville, Director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Plant Biology, shared the 2006 Balzan Prize in Plant Molecular Genetics for work having “far reaching implications for plant science at both the fundamental level and in potential applications.”
  • Russell Hemley and Ho-kwang (Dave) Mao of the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory won the Balzan Prize for 2005 in mineral physics.