Fulbright remembers Professor Alan MacDiarmid

Fulbright remembers Nobel Prize-winning alumnus Professor Alan MacDiarmid

Fulbright New Zealand joins the world in mourning Nobel Laureate and Fulbright alumnus Professor Alan MacDiarmid, who passed away at his home in Philadelphia this week.

“As an organisation we are deeply saddened by the passing of one of New Zealand’s greatest scientists,” says Fulbright New Zealand Executive Director, Mele Wendt. “We are tremendously proud to have rewarded Professor MacDiarmid’s potential so many years ago, and to have shared in his fabulous scientific achievements. He has been a fantastic ambassador for New Zealand and one of our programme’s greatest success stories.”

Professor MacDiarmid was one of the earliest participants in the New Zealand Fulbright programme, awarded a Fulbright New Zealand Graduate Award in 1950 to complete his PhD at the University of Wisconsin. He became President of the University’s International Club, the largest student organisation on campus, and met his future wife Marian at an International Club dance.

He acknowledged the life-changing impact of his Fulbright award when addressing Fulbright New Zealand’s Awards Presentation Ceremony in 2001:

“I really cannot say, cannot express adequately, how grateful I am to the Fulbright programme,” he said. “I was in the second or third shipment of New Zealand Fulbright scholars to the United States and if it were not for the Fulbright fellowship I would certainly not have had the good fortune of obtaining a Nobel Prize, and I would probably never have left New Zealand. Certainly I think we all owe a great deal of gratitude to Senator Fulbright – his programme, I think, is conceptually one of the world’s greatest education programmes to have been started.”

After obtaining a second doctorate from Cambridge University in England, Professor MacDiarmid returned to the United States where he had a long and notable career at the University of Pennsylvania. Although he became an American citizen, he retained strong links to the scientific community of New Zealand and returned frequently for speaking engagements and official events.

One of 35 Fulbright alumni to have received the Nobel Prize, he shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with colleagues Alan Heeger and Hideki Shirakawa for the discovery and development of electrically-conductive plastics. Professor MacDiarmid was only the third New Zealander to win a Nobel Prize, after Sir Ernest Rutherford and Maurice Wilkins. He was awarded New Zealand’s top science award, the Rutherford Medal, in 2000 and was appointed a Member of the Order of New Zealand, the country’s highest official honour, the following year.

ENDS

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