Michael Duncan, Franklin and Regents’ Professor of Chemistry at the University of Georgia, has been named winner of a top national honor in physical chemistry. Duncan, who has been on the faculty at UGA since 1983, is winner of the 2011 Award in Experimental Physical Chemistry, given by the American Chemical Society’s Physical Chemistry Division. Duncan is first winner of the newly established award. He will receive a plaque honoring him at the ACS annual meeting this fall. He will also receive $1500 in travel expenses to the meeting. The award is being given for developments in laser spectroscopy to investigate the structures and bonding in exotic types of molecular ions and metal atom clusters. A native of Greenville, S.C., Duncan is the winner of numerous professional honors, including an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, the Charles H. Stone Award and being named a Fellow in the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Furman University and his doctoral degree from Rice University. After serving a postdoctoral fellowship at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics at the National Bureau of Standards and the University of Colorado, he came to UGA as an assistant professor in 1983. Named professor in 1992, he became a Distinguished Research Professor in 1995, Franklin Professor in 2006 and Regents’ Professor in 2007. A senior editor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry, he is also on editorial advisory boards of a number of other professional publications and has been an invited speaker on dozens of occasions worldwide.
