Fall 2012 - University of Toronto Schools

John Polanyi in his office at UofT. “We are obsessed by what we do, so it is a holiday
to be permitted to do it.”
After completing his Ph.D. in 1952, “Chance,
and a lucrative Fellowship ($3,000 per annum)”
enticed John back to Canada to do postdoctoral
research at NRC in Ottawa.
In his autobiography on UofT’s website (www.
utoronto.ca/jpolanyi), John confessed that the
study of science was initially a disappointment
to him. “In the laboratory I found that it was
necessary to follow procedures that had not been
fully explained (if, indeed, the explanations were
Awards
1962: The Marlow Medal of the Faraday Society
1965: The Centenary Medal of the British
Chemical Society
1965: The Steacie Prize for Natural Sciences
1967: The Noranda Award of the Chemical
Institute of Canada
1974: Officer of the Order of Canada; in 1979,
he was promoted to Companion.
1977: The Henry Marshall Tory Medal of the
Royal Society of Canada
1982: The Wolf Prize in Chemistry
Courtesy: University of Toronto archives
known) in order to obtain the ‘right’ result. Out of
curiosity I would vary the method from that given
in the laboratory manual, with the consequence
that I routinely got the ‘wrong’ result. All this was
symptomatic of the fact that I lacked the discipline
to learn, or at any rate to learn with any degree
of pleasure, the large number of rules that one
must master before one can play the game of
science.” Without great enthusiasm, he persisted
through years of training; gradually, he came to
be “captivated and engrossed by the beauty of the
subject matter and the thrill of the challenge that
it offered.”
He acknowledged that: “This is a peculiar story
for a scientist to give of the birth of his interest in
his subject. It happens to be my story, and may
serve to illustrate that in the choice of a career, as
in other major decisions, a lifelong commitment
need not start with a love affair.”
In 1956, he became a lecturer at UofT; he was
promoted to assistant professor in 1957, associate
professor in 1960, and full professor in 1962. In
1974, he was named University Professor.
In 1986, cited by the Royal Swedish Academy
of Sciences for “contributions concerning the
dynamics of chemical elementary processes,”
John won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his
work in chemical kinetics – a prize he shared with
Dudley Herschbach of Harvard University and
Yuan Lee of the University of California, Berkeley.
The years have not diminished his enthusiasm for
scientific inquiry. “Work has continued without a
break in the lab,” he told The Root at the end of
August. “We are obsessed by what we do, so it is a
holiday to be permitted to do it.”
His Nobel medal – on display at UofT’s Massey
College, where he is a Senior Fellow – is one of
many honours John has received over the years. n
1986: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry
1988: The Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Prize
1989: The Royal Medal of the Royal Society of
London
1992: The John C. Polanyi Lecture Award of the
Canadian Society for Chemistry
2007: The Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold
Medal for Science and Engineering
2010: Faraday Lectureship Prize Winner from
the Royal Society of Chemistry
14 THE ROOT • FALL 2012