Koji Nakanishi, Centennial Professor of Chemistry at Columbia University, has been selected to receive the American Chemical Society's 1990 Arthur C. Cope Award for outstanding achievement in organic chemistry. Nakanishi, 64, will be presented with a gold medal and $15,000 at the ACS national meeting, to be held in August in Washington, D.C. The award will also provide Columbia with a $30,000 research grant.
Nakanishi, who has been at Columbia for 21 years, has gained international recognition for his development of spectroscopic techniques to isolate and determine the structure of biologically important chemicals that are difficult to study because they are produced in small quantities, oxidize rapidly, or are sensitive to light.
Nakanishi has used the research methods he developed to examine a wide variety of biological phenomena. His work in isolating, identifying, and synthesizing philantho-toxin, or venom from a wasp found in the Sahara oasis, may lead to an ...
