The 2004 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Mechanical Engineering presented to Roger Bacon

The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA, awarded the 2004 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Mechanical Engineering to Roger Bacon for his fundamental research on the production of graphite whiskers and the determination of their microstructure and properties, for his pioneering development efforts in the production of the world's first continuously processed carbon fibers and the world's first high modulus and high-strength carbon fibers, and for his contributions to the development of carbon fibers from alternative starting materials.     

The 2005 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering presented to Andrew Viterbi

The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA, awarded the 2005 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering to Andrew Viterbi for developing an efficient technique that has advanced the design and implementation of modern space and wireless communication systems. He also was a leader in the development of Code Division Multiple Access wireless technologies.     

The 2001 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth Science presented to Rob Van der Voo

The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, awarded the 2001 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth Science to Rob Van der Voo for his outstanding contributions to the field of paleomagnetism and his reconstruction of ancient continental positions that have lead to a better understanding of plate tectonic processes for the past billion years of Earth history.     

The 2004 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Engineering presented to Robert E. Newnham

The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Engineering to Robert E. Newnham for his invention of multiphase piezoelectric transducers and their spatial architecture which revolutionized the field of acoustic imaging. The background and significance of his research is presented. Attention is focused on the impact his research prompted in the field of medical imaging, in particular non-invasive, real-time visualization of internal tissue and organs of human body using ultrasound energy. Societal impact of Dr. Newnham's work is also pointed out.     

The 2011 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics presented to Nicola Cabibbo

The Franklin Institute of Philadelphia awards the 2011 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics to Nicola Cabibbo for his pioneering work in the field of elementary particle physics, with special emphasis on his role in furthering our understanding of the underlying symmetries that relate one elementary particle interaction to another.     

The Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science presented to Judah Folkman

The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania awarded the 2001 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science to Judah Folkman for his founding of the field of angiogenesis research and demonstration that angiogenesis is a necessary factor in the conversion of abnormal cells to malignant tumors.     

The 2004 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry presented to Harry B. Gray

The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, awarded the 2004 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry to Harry B. Gray for his pioneering contributions in the field of electron transfer in metalloproteins. In a series of elegant and challenging experiments beginning in the late 70s, Gray and his coworkers have shown that the transfer of electrons in metalloproteins can proceed over long distances (~ 20 Å) and at fast rates. These experiments have involved the regiospecific functionalization of structurally characterized electron transfer proteins with ruthenium complexes, coupled with laser excitation and transient spectroscopy. Probing the effects of thermodynamic driving force, temperature, donor-acceptor distance and electronic coupling, Gray has shaped our detailed current understanding of the principles governing biological electron flow. The mechanism of electron transfer has been identified as electron tunneling mediated by the molecules separating donor and acceptor. Tunneling timetables have been established for various intervening media. Important biological processes like respiration and photosynthesis depend on facile electron transfer, and Gray's contribution serves as the fundamental basis for understanding these and many related reactions.     

The 2010 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science presented to Peter C. Nowell

Peter Nowell is known for his discovery that a small terminal deletion on chromosome 22 is a consistent feature in leukemic cells from chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) patients. This was the first direct evidence that a human cancer could be the result of a somatic (chromosomal) mutation, and paved the way for the development of a therapy that now cures 95% of individuals with CML.     

The 2003 Benjamin Franklin Medal in civil engineering presented to Charles H. Thornton

The world is a more interesting and safer place to live because of the efforts of Dr. Charles H. Thornton. Throughout his career Dr. Thornton has been able to translate simple structural elements into unique solutions for the construction of long-span structures and high-rise buildings. His leadership role in the analysis of structural failures and his translation of knowledge obtained from the analysis of these events has clearly provided the public with safer structures. Dr. Thornton has also been a leader in the motivation of high school students to pursue careers in engineering, architecture and construction.     

The 2005 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science presented to Aravind Joshi

The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, awarded the 2005 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science to Aravind Joshi for his fundamental contributions to natural language processing technology and to cognitive science, including particularly the development of the Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG) family of formalisms and tractable polynomial time algorithms that analyze the complex, varied surface word orders of human languages while simultaneously recovering local elementary syntactic domains corresponding to meaning. In addition, Joshi has been a major collaborator on a new theory of discourse coherence that has influenced all subsequent work on anaphora resolution, and is currently applying TAG to address modeling problems in the life sciences.     

The 2001 Benjamin Franklin medal in chemistry presented to K. Barry Sharpless

The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA awarded the 2001 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry to K. Barry Sharpless for his important innovative scientific contributions to the field of asymmetric catalytic oxidation, which resulted in highly enantioselective processes for the epoxidation, dihydroxylation and aminohydroxylation of olefins.     

The 2003 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth Science presented to Norman Phillips and Joseph Smagorinsky

The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, awarded the 2003 Benjamin Franklin medal in Earth Science to Norman Phillips and Joseph Smagorinsky for their seminal and pioneering studies that led to the first successful predictions of the weather using numerical methods, and to an understanding of the general circulation of the atmosphere. In addition, Smagorinsky played a leading role in establishing the current global observational network for the atmosphere, and Phillips’ leadership fostered the development of effective methods for the use of observations in data assimilation systems.     

The 2011 Benjamin Franklin Medal in computer and cognitive science presented to John R. Anderson

John R. Anderson is an international leader in the computational representation and simulation of human cognition. He is credited as having developed the first “cognitive architecture”—a computational framework for specifying both the abilities and limitations of human behavior. Anderson has also made fundamental contributions in applying cognitive architectures to practical problems, most notably in the development of intelligent tutoring systems: computer-based tutors that continually infer the cognitive state of the student, striving to determine what the student knows and does not know, and targeting further instruction accordingly. For these achievements, Anderson was awarded the 2011 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science.     

The 2004 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science presented to Richard M. Karp

The Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science is awarded to Dr. Richard M. Karp for his contributions to the understanding of computational complexity. His work helps programmers find workable solution procedures avoiding approaches that would fail to find a solution in a reasonable amount of time. Scientific, commercial, or industrial situations where his work applies include establishing least-cost schedules for industrial production, transportation routing, circuit layout, communication network design, and predicting the spatial structure of a protein from its amino acid sequencing.