Susan Solomon, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Aeronomy Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., has received the 1992 Common Wealth Award for science and invention. The 13-year-old awards program, administered by the Bank of Delaware, was established by Ralph Hayes, a director of Coca-Cola International, through a bequest in his will. Solomon was selected to receive the honor by the scientific research society Sigma Xi. The awards were presented April 25 in W

James R. Gosz, a professor of biology at the University of New Mexico, has taken a leave to become the executive director of the Ecological Society of America's newly established Sustainable Biosphere Initiative (SBI) Project Office in Washington, D.C. The goal of the initiative is to integrate the expertise of scientists, educators, and decision-makers on environmental issues. Gosz, 51, says that one way to ensure that this objective is met is by "making significant attempts to bring in othe

Donald Frederick Hunt, a professor of chemistry at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, has been chosen as the state of Virginia's outstanding scientist of 1992. Hunt was introduced to the state's General Assembly on February 26 and was honored at a March 30 ceremony at the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond. Also honored were Joseph Larner, a professor of pharmacology at the university's Health Sciences Center, who was given a lifetime achievement award, and William O. Bourke, chai

Pople, 66, was recognized for his contributions to theoretical chemistry, particularly his development of widely used quantum-chemical methods. In the mid-1960s, he and colleagues published a series of papers on the approximate self-consistent molecular orbital theory, based on quantum mechanics, which is used to calculate charge distributions and electronic dipole moments in organic molecules (Journal of Chemical Physics, 43:S129, 1965; 43:S136, 1965; 44:3289, 1966; 47:2026, 1967; 49:4643, 19

George A. Olah, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and holder of the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Chair in Organic Chemistry at the University of Southern California, is the winner of the American Chemical Society's Richard C. Tolman Medal. The award honors those who have made outstanding contributions in chemistry and have accomplished a major portion of their work while living in Southern California. Olah will receive the medal and a citation on March 20. Olah, 64, is the discoverer

The newly appointed chief executive officer of the New York Academy of Sciences says he hopes to guide the academy to a leadership role in the national and international arenas as well as locally. "One of the academy's central functions must continue to be serving the science and engineering community itself," says Rodney W. Nichols, named to the CEO post late last month. "But the function of serving society, which has always been tacit, really has to rise to equal priority." Nichols, a forme

Sidebar: How AIDS Has Changed the Nature of Research Sidebar: Security Clearance Delays Hamper Gays' Careers While more institutions move to accommodate homosexual researchers, many gay activists still complain of bias Last September, the business world focused its attention on Lotus Development Corp. when it became the first large firm to offer health and other benefits to the "spousal equivalents" of its gay and lesbian employees. "The intent is to make us the employer of choice," says Rus

The Association of Biotechnology Companies (ABC), a 270- member international organization based in Washington, D.C., has named William E. Small as its executive director. He began his duties February 3. Small has spent much of his career working for health-care associations in Washington. For the past year, he has been director of communications for the American Nurses Association. From 1989 to 1991, he served as deputy executive vice president for management and operations at the American A

In his best-selling expose, And the Band Played On (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1987), San Francisco Chronicle reporter Randy Shilts documented how AIDS was largely ignored by the research and funding communities until the disease reached crisis proportions. Today, however, AIDS has become a glamorous field of investigation. Because the United States research establishment has become convinced that proceeding at an accelerated pace might help save lives, the processes of proposal review and d

For gay scientists hoping to do work for the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of Energy, or the National Security Agency, one sign that times have changed is that homosexuality, in and of itself, is no longer a basis for denial of a security clearance. "Before 1975, no gay person was allowed to have a security clearance, even at the lowest level. Since then, things have gotten significantly better," says Richard Gayer, a San Francisco lawyer whose practice focuses on appealing denial

The Berkeley, Calif.-based Minerva Foundation has presented its seventh Golden Brain Award to Robert H. Wurtz, chief of the Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research at the National Eye Institute. The award, which honors basic research on vision and the brain, was presented to Wurtz in December. For the past 25 years, Wurtz, 55, has been studying vision and oculomotor control in rhesus monkeys--animals whose visual "system is remarkably similar to ours," he says. The ultimate goal of his research o

Susan A. Henry, head of Carnegie Mellon University's department of biological sciences and a professor in the department, has been named dean of the university's Mellon College of Science. Henry, 45, has headed the biological sciences department since 1987. As department head, she has obtained grants totaling more than $1.5 million from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Science Foundation, and the National Intitutes of Health for special educational projects focusing on strength