The ACS International Award for Research in Agrochemicals is given to a scientist who has made outstanding contributions to the field of agrochemicals at the international level. Their vision and sustained contributions will have opened new horizons for other investigators in their field and beyond. Nominations are now being sought for the 2022 Award winner to be presented at the ACS Fall 2023 National Meeting in San Francisco, California. This award includes an honorarium of $5000 USD. Deadline for nominations is December 31, 2022. For details on the nomination process, see the the Call for Nominations.
For more information, please contact Qing Li, AGRO Awards Committee Chair, 808-956-2011.
2023 Award Recipient
Thomas Stevenson was born in Murphysboro, Illinois and was educated in the public-school systems in Muncie, Indiana and Granite City, Illinois. He graduated magna cum laude with a B.S. in chemistry from Saint Louis University in 1979 where he carried out undergraduate research on the Heck Reaction with Harold A. Dieck funded by a Monsanto Summer Fellowship. In 1979, he received a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Illinois under the supervision of Nelson J. Leonard.
After his postdoctoral research at the University of Geneva in Switzerland with Wolfgang Oppolzer, Tom joined DuPont Crop Protection in 1985 as a research chemist, rising in ranks to DuPont Fellow. Upon his retirement in 2017, he joined FMC Agricultural Solutions as an FMC Fellow.
Tom has been an enthusiastic member of the American Chemical Society and its AGRO Division. In addition to giving more than 80 presentations in AGRO symposia and poster sessions, he has also served on the AGRO Executive committee. He has co-organized more than a dozen symposia at ACS meetings and was the topic organizer for the Synthesis Topic Area for the 13th IUPAC International Congress of Pesticide Chemistry which was co-sponsored by the AGRO Division at the ACS Fall 2014 meeting. He has also co-edited two ACS publication books based on these symposia. For these contributions, he was named an AGRO Division Fellow and an ACS Fellow.
During his career Tom has proven to be a prolific inventor in the field of agricultural chemistry across insecticides, fungicides and herbicides. He holds over 70 issued United States patents and has presented over 120 lectures and posters at scientific meetings. His contributions to the invention of several successful commercial agricultural products, most notably the blockbuster insecticides Ryanxypyr and Cyazypyr, have led to numerous scientific awards including the Kenneth A. Spencer Award, AGRO Award for Innovation in Chemistry of Agriculture, ACS Heroes of Chemistry, ACS Award for Team Innovation, and the IPO Educational Foundation National Inventor of the Year.
Past Awardees
2022
Jeff Scott, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
2021
David B. Satelle, University College London, London, UK
2020
Qing X. Li, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa, Hawai‘i
2019
Vincent L. Salgado, BASF, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina
2018
Stephen Powles, University of Western Australia, Australia
2017
Jeffrey Bloomquist, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida
2016
Yoshihisa Ozoe, Shimane University, Japan
2015
Keith D. Wing, formerly of Rohm and Haas and DuPont Crop Protection, Wilmington, DE
2014
Ralf Nauen, Bayer CropScience, Monheim, Germany
2013
René Feyereisen, National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRA), France
2012
Thomas C. Sparks, Dow AgroSciences, Indianapolis, IN
2011
George P. Lahm, DuPont Crop Science, Newark, Delaware
2010
Shinzo Kagabu, Gifu University, Gifu, Japan
2009
R. Donald Wauchope, USDA-ARS (retired), Tifton, Georgia
2008
David M. Soderlund, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
2007
Gerald T. Brooks, University of Sussex (retired), Brighton, UK
2007
Fredrick J. Perlak, Monsanto, St. Louis, Missouri
2006
Joel Coats, Iowa State University, Ames
2006
Isamu Yamaguchi, Agricultural Chemicals Inspection Station, Tokyo, Japan
2005
Robert Krieger, University of California-Riverside
2005
Janice E. Chambers, Mississippi State University, Starkville
2004
Stephen Duke, USDA-ARS, Oxford, Mississippi
2004
John Marshall Clark, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
2003
Hideo Ohkawa, Kobe University, Japan
2003
Bob Hollingworth, Michigan State University, East Lansing
2002
Marinus Los, American Cyanamid, Princeton, New Jersey
2002
Keith Solomon, University of Guelph, Canada
2001
Ralph Mumma, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
2001
Donald Crosby, University of California-Davis
2000
Herbert B. Scher, Zeneca, Richmond, California
2000
George P. Georghiou, University of California-Riverside
1999
James Seiber, University of Nevada-Reno
1999
Don Baker, Zeneca, Richmond, California
1998
Leslie Crombie, University of Nottingham, England
1998
George Levitt, DuPont, Wilmington, Delaware
1997
Izuru Yamamoto, University of Tokyo, Japan
1997
Fritz Führ, Institute of Chemistry and Dynamic, Jülich, Germany
1996
Klaus Naumann, Bayer AG, Leverkusen, Germany
1996
Günther Voss, Ciba, Basel, Switzerland
1995
Mohyee Eldefrawi, University of Maryland-Baltimore
1995
Koji Nakanishi, Columbia University, New York, New York
1994
Toshio Fujita, Kyoto University, Japan
1993
Morifusa Eto, Kyushu University, Fukoka, Japan
1992
Bruce Hammock, University of California-Davis
1991
Stuart Frear, USDA-ARS, Fargo, North Dakota
1990
David Schooley, University of Nevada-Reno
1989
Toshio Narahashi, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
1988
Ernest Hodgson, North Carolina State University
1987
Fumio Matsumura, Michigan State University, East Lansing
1986
James Tumlinson, USDA-ARS, Gainesville, Florida
1985
Junshi Miyamoto, Sumitomo Chemical Co., Japan
1984
Jacques Jean Martel, Roussel Uclaf, Paris, France
1983
Karl Heinz Buechel, Bayer AG, Leverkusen, Germany
1982
Jack R. Plimmer, USDA-ARS, Beltsville, Maryland
1981
Philip C. Kearney, USDA-ARS, Beltsville, Maryland
1980
Minoru Nakajima, Kyoto University, Japan
1979
Milton S. Schechter, USDA-ARS (retired), Beltsville, Maryland
1978
Julius J. Menn, Stauffer Chemical Co., Mountain View, California
1977
Francis A. Gunther, University of California-Riverside
1976
Morton Beroza, USDA-ARS (retired), Beltsville, Maryland
1975
Michael Elliot, Rothamsted Experimental Station, Harpenden, England
1974
T. Roy Fukuto, University of California-Riverside
1973
Hubert Martin, British Crop Protection Council, London, England
1972
Ralph L. Wain, Wye College, University of London,England
1971
Robert L. Metcalf, University of Illinois, Champagne-Urban
1970
Richard D. O’Brien, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
1969
John E. Casida, University of California-Berkley