Return to PJ Online Home Page
The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 265 No 7114 p403
September 16, 2000 The Society

Presentation of Glaxo Wellcome international achievement award

presentation
Dr Leak presents Professor Langer with his Glaxo Wellcome award

Professor Robert Langer (Kenneth J. Germeshausen professor of chemical and biomedical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States) was this year's winner of the Glaxo Wellcome international achievement award.
Presenting the award, Dr Rosemary Leak (Glaxo Wellcome) said that Professor Langer's work had shown an extraordinary diversity, and that its innovations had opened new areas of research conducted at the highest scientific levels.
His work had encompassed the development of a new generation of biodegradable polymer systems for application to macromolecular science, polymer-based delivery systems for delivery to the brain, controlled-release micro-chip technology, and a new field of tissue engineering, which had a wide range of potential clinical applications. His work had resulted in 370 patents, one of which had been cited as the outstanding patent in Massachusetts in 1988 and one of only 20 outstanding patents in the US.

Professor Langer had received a degree in chemical engineering from Cornell university in 1970, and a science doctorate in the same subject from MIT in 1974.
In addition, he had received honorary doctorates from the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule (ETH, Zurich, Switzerland) and the Technicon (Israel). In 1989, he had been elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and to both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in 1992. Professor Langer is also chairman of the Science Board of the US Food and Drug Administration.
The Glaxo Wellcome International Achievement Award is given to an individual who has demonstrated, through published work over the past three years, a substantial advancement in the application of scientific knowledge within the pharmaceutical sciences.