Stanford über-chemist RICHARD ZARE has won a 2009 Frontiers of Knowledge Award, in the basic sciences category. The award is given by the BBVA Foundation in collaboration with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). In announcing the award, the foundation said Zare was chosen for his pioneering work in laser-induced fluorescence.
The announcement said Zare’s work “has unraveled secrets of nature’s building blocks and the underlying interactions between them by enabling us to view what happens at the molecular scale.” It said the technique “has allowed the counting of individual molecules in a bacterial cell and has contributed to the DNA sequencing of the human genome.”
The award includes 400,000 euros (about $540,000), which Zare will share with the co-winner of the basic sciences award, Michael Fisher, a physicist at the University of Maryland. Zare and Fisher are scheduled to receive the award in a ceremony in Spain in June. (Coincidentally, Fisher is the father of Daniel Fisher, a professor of applied physics at Stanford.)
The Frontiers of Knowledge Awards, in which there are eight categories, were first given in 2008.
The BBVA Foundation is the corporate social responsibility arm of the BBVA Group, a multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Spain. BBVA stands for Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria.
