(left to right) Harry Allcock (2010 Paul J. Flory Award Recipient) and Barry Farmer (POLY Chair) 

Harry Allcock, Professor of Chemistry at Pennsylvania State University, is the recipient of the 2010 Paul J. Flory Polymer Education Award.

The Flory Award commemorates the achievements of the late Paul Flory, a Nobel Prize recipient who was a chemist at Stanford University.  It was created to recognize, encourage, and stinulate outstanding achievements by an individual in promoting undergraduate or graduate polymer education. An award symposium was held during the Spring ACS National Meeting in San Francisco.

“There is a crucial need to acquaint students in the chemistry-related disciplines with the ways in which long-range academic research can lead to useful developments,” said Allcock. “Fewer than a quarter of the students in chemistry
will find careers in teaching, whereas the majority will be employed in industry or government laboratories. Thus, as faculty, we have a responsibility to broaden students’ interests beyond the highly focused academic topics of their thesis research. This is what I try to do in my classroom teaching, in the research laboratory, and in my books.”