Jacqueline Barton

Jacqueline K. Barton (born May 7, 1952) New York City, NY, is an American chemist. She is the Arthur and Marian Hanisch Memorial professor of Chemistry at California Institute of Technology. The primary focus of her research is transverse electron transport along double-stranded DNA, its implications in the biology of DNA damage and repair, and its potential for materials sciences applications. At Caltech she married fellow chemist, Peter Dervan. and they have one daughter, Elizabeth.

Education

Barton received her B.A. from Barnard College in 1974. She went on to graduate study at Columbia University, where she studied inorganic chemistry under the supervision of S.J. Lippard earning her PhD in Inorganic Chemistry, Columbia University (1978). She was appointed as a Professor of Chemistry, Hunter College (1980-82), Professor of Chemistry, Columbia University (1983-89) and Professor of Chemistry at CalTech, California Institute of Technology (1989-to the present).

Career

After earning her Ph.D. from Columbia in 1979, Barton held post-doctoral appointments at Bell Labs and Yale University, where she worked with R.G. Shulman. She earned tenure at Columbia University in the 1980s. During that time her main focus was the use of organo-ruthenium complexes to probe the physical conformations of DNA. Barton eventually moved to Caltech, where her research has focused on charge transport in DNA. She was named chair of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering of California Institute of Technology, effective July 1, 2009.^[1] She is a Member of the Board of Dow Chemical (1993-), Bell Laboratories, and Gilead Sciences Scientific Advisory Board.

Awards and honors

Barton (third right) receiving the National Medal of Science at the White House in 2011

• Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation (1985)
• Fresenius Award (1986)
• American Chemical Society Eli Lilly and Company Award in Biological Chemistry (1987)
• American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry (1988)
• Mayor of New York's Award in Science and Technology (1988)
• American Chemical Society Baekeland Medal (1991)
• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991)^[2]
• MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (1991)
• Garvan Medal of the American Chemical Society (1992)
• Tolman Medal of the American Chemical Society (1994)
• Havinga Medal (1995)
• Paul Karrer Medal (1996)
• Nichols Medal of the American Chemical Society (1997)
• Weizmann Women & Science Award (1998)
• elected American Philosophical Society (2000)
• elected National Academy of Sciences (2002)
• Ronald Breslow Award in Biomimetic Chemistry from the American Chemical Society(2003)
• ACS Gibbs Medal (2006)
• F.A. Cotton Medal for Excellence in Chemical Research of the American Chemical Society in 2007.
• National Medal of Science (2011)

References

External links

• Barton Research Group