For years, Professor Stephen J. Lippard, head of the Department of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, researched the interactions between metals and biological systems. Eventually, his concentration was with cisplatin, an anti-cancer drug that contains platinum, and has proven particularly effective against testicular and ovarian forms of the disease. Not much was known about cisplatin until he began investigating it years ago as a faculty member at Columbia University in New York.

In 1983 he moved to MIT, and 11 years later wrote in an MIT Spectrum magazine article: "We'd like to learn enough about how the drug [cisplatin] works so we can design new types of platinum compounds that are effective against different forms of cancer." His MIT team made significant progress in that line, and the White House announced on Monday, Nov. 14, that President Bush would award professor Lippard the National Medal of Science, along with seven other distinguished academics: Kenneth J. Arrow, professor emeritus of economics at Stanford; Norman Borlaugh, a distinguished professor of international agriculture at Texas A&M; Robert N. Clayton, distinguished professor in chemistry at the University of Chicago; Edwin N. Lightfoot, professor emeritus in chemical and biological engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; Philip A. Sharp, a biology professor at MIT; Thomas E. Starzl, a surgery professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine; and Dennis P. Sullivan, professor of mathematics at SUNY, Stony Brook. The NMS is the nation's highest scientific honor.

Lippard, the Arthur Amos Noyes Professor of Chemistry at MIT, became head of his department in July, 1995, after being '"enthusiastically recommended," according to MIT Dean of Science Robert J. Birgeneau: "He combines outstanding research accomplishments with an excellent record of undergraduate and graduate education," Birgeneau said.

Professor Lippard is a pioneer in bioinorganic chemistry, a specialty that deals with the interactions between metals and biological systems. The Lippard lab is also engaged in a major program to understand another biological interaction involving metals, specifically the diiron center in methane monoxygenase, through studies of the enzyme and model compounds. The diiron center is remarkable in that it converts methane to methanol in bacteria which use methane as their sole source of carbon and energy.

In 2000, Lippard and two researchers developed a means to detect nitric oxide that could improve scientific understanding of this molecule's role in neurological signaling and other biological functions. Nitric oxide plays a major role in the regulation of blood pressure, the prevention of blood clotting, the dilation of blood vessels and the destruction of pathogens. It is used extensively in medical treatment—for example, nitroglycerin ameliorates the pain of angina by supplying nitric oxide to the blood vessels that supply the heart. Also, the popular drug Viagra controls penile erection by regulating nitric oxide.

Dr. Lippard has previously been recognized for his work by election to the National Academy of Sciences and the National Institute of Medicine. He's won two major American Chemical Society (ACS) awards in his field—the ACS Award in Inorganic Chemistry, in 1987 ; and the ACS Award for Distinguished Service in Inorganic Chemistry, in 1994. In 1995 he won the William H. Nichols Medal of the New York Section of the ACS. He is the author or co-author of many research articles and holds several U.S. and foreign patents. With Jeremy M. Berg, he published Principles of Bioinorganic Chemistry in 1994.

"I am very pleased to receive this honor for it recognizes the work of the many wonderful graduate students and post-doctoral associates who have contributed to the science that we were able to accomplish," Lippard says. "It was most unexpected."

A native of Pittsburgh, he holds a B.A. from Haverford College, 1962; and a Ph.D. from MIT in 1965.

—by John Lombardi, senior writer