Emeritus Membership Award

Emeritus Award: This award recognizes members who have contributed to spectroscopy and have been members of the Society for 15 years, and have retired from active scientific endeavor. Nominations for the Emeritus Membership Award may be made by Regional, Technical, or Student Sections, individual members, the Awards Committee or the Executive Committee. Nomination material should include a letter of recommendation with supporting documentation regarding the nominee's contributions to the Society and spectroscopy, a current CV, and a short bio.

2026 Award Winners

John M. Chalmers; CChem FRSC
John began his industrial career in the UK in 1965 in the vibrational spectroscopy laboratory of the then ICI Plastics Division. He retired from ICI at the end of 1999 as a Business Research Associate. John became a self-employed consultant from 2000-2016 specialising in vibrational spectroscopy applications. From 2000-2010, he was also employed part-time at the School of Chemistry in the University of Nottingham.

He is an Honorary Lifetime member of both the UK Infrared and Raman Discussion Group (IRDG), having served as Chair (1995-2003), and the International Society for Clinical Spectroscopy (CLIRSPEC). John also served as a Governing Board Member of SAS and as its President in 2008. He was a committee member of the Association of British Spectroscopists (ABS), serving as its Chair from 1997-2000.

John received The Coblentz Society Williams-Wright Award in 1994. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and the Society for Applied Spectroscopy.

He was the co-editor, together with Professor Peter Griffiths, of the 5-volume Handbook of Vibrational Spectroscopy. John has edited/co-edited several books/reference works on vibrational spectroscopy and has had published over 20 book chapters. He is author/co-author to over 50 journal publications.

Geoffrey N. Coleman
Ohio native Geoffrey N. Coleman was awarded B.A. and M.A. degrees by DePauw University. He earned his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry at Colorado State University where he was mentored by R.K. Skogerboe (President of SAS in 1972). After a postdoctoral stint with D.F.S. Natusch, Geoff held faculty positions at the University of Georgia and the University of Alabama where research centered on sample introduction and applications of plasma emission spectroscopy. Moving to the commercial sector, he joined Leeman Labs, then Fisons/VG/ARL, and Thermo Instruments where he had roles in applications development, customer support, product management, and product development. Novel applications ranged from the analysis of food oils for trace elements, ICP analysis using VUV wavelengths, to real-time, on-line analysis of air and stack gases for trace elements. In 2002, Geoff was offered a leadership role at Meinhard (a division of Elemental Scientific Inc.) and a rekindled focus on liquid sample introduction to analytical plasmas.
Geoff helped establish the Piedmont Section of SAS, served on the Editorial Board of Applied Spectroscopy, and served several terms on the Governing Board. He has served on numerous SAS committees, including Lester W. Strock, Publications, Nominations, Awards (chair), and Tour Speaker (chair). In 2017, the Society honored Geoff with the Distinguished Service Award.

2025 Award Winners

Professor Peter Griffiths
Peter Griffiths was born in England and spent the first 25 years of his life there. After receiving a doctorate in Physical Chemistry from Oxford University in 1967, he spent the next two years doing postdoctoral research at the University of Maryland under the supervision of Ellis Lippincott. After brief stints with Digilab in Cambridge, MA and Sadtler Research Labs in Philadelphia, PA, he joined the faculty of Ohio University, reaching the rank of Distinguished Professor. After ten years, he moved to the University of California, Riverside before accepting the chairmanship of the Chemistry Department of the University of Idaho, from which he retired in 2008.

His principal research area has been analytical vibrational spectroscopy with particular emphasis on FT-IR spectroscopy with the occasional foray into Raman spectroscopy and gas, liquid and supercritical fluid chromatography. Among the specific topics that his research group has worked on are diffuse reflection spectroscopy, open-path atmospheric monitoring, and the interface of FT-IR spectrometers with various types of chromatographs (GC, HPLC and SFC). He has served as president of both the Coblentz Society and the Society for Applied Spectroscopy. He served on several editorial boards, including more than 30 years with Applied Spectroscopy. He was an Associate Editor of that journal from 1981 to 2009, the Editor-in-Chief from 2009 to 2012 and the Editor from 2012 to 2018.

He has co-authored over 300 papers and has written, co-authored or edited eleven books on various aspects of vibrational spectroscopy. He taught in a week-long course on the interpretation of IR and Raman spectra for over 30 years and acted as a consultant to several companies, law firms and organizations. His work has been recognized by several awards including the Coblentz Award (1975), the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh Award (1985), the New York SAS Gold Medal in Spectroscopy (1995), the Fritz Prëgl Medal of Austrian Society for Analytical Chemistry (1995), the Bomem Michelson Award (2003), the Gerald S. Birth Award for Outstanding Work in Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (2004), the Anachem Award (2012), and the Ellis R. Lippincott Award (2023).

Professor Ramon Barnes, Ph.D.
Ramon Barnes is director of the University Research Institute for Analytical Chemistry, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Massachusetts, editor/publisher of the ICP Information Newsletter (1975- ), and chairman of the Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry (1980-2024). He received a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He was a Materials Engineer at the NASA Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio, and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the DOE Ames Laboratory at Iowa State University. From 1969 to 2000 he taught analytical chemistry and maintained an international research program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In 2000 he became professor emeritus. He has published more than 300 papers, edited four books, and continues an active research interest in fundamentals and applications of inductively coupled plasma (ICP) discharges for spectrochemical analysis.

In 2003 he received the Lester W. Strock Award from the Society for Applied Spectroscopy for outstanding work in the development of the flow field-flow fractionation ICP technique. In 2007 he was elected Fellow of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy. In 2008 he received the Török Tibor Award and Commemorative Medal from the Spectrochemical Association of the Hungarian Chemical Society during their annual national meeting. In January 2010 he received the first Winter Conference Award in Plasma Spectrochemistry sponsored by Thermo Fisher Scientific at the 2010 Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry. In 2013 he received the CSI award from the Colloquium Spectroscopium Internationale, and also he was honored by the Brazilian Chemical Society at 2013 ENQA. In 2014 he received the Ioannes Marcus Marci Medal from the Ioannes Marcus Marci Spectroscopic Society of the Czech Republic at the ESAS 2014 and 15th Czech – Slovak Spectroscopic Conference, Prague. In 2015 he was selected by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board for a Fulbright Specialist Grant in Chile.

The University Research Institute for Analytical Chemistry (URIAC) is the research and development division of ICP Information Newsletter, Inc., a not for profit corporation established in 1997 to foster science education, research, and study in spectroanalytical chemistry. 

2024

The 2024 winner is Gary M. Hieftje.

EMERITUS MEMBERS

* - Deceased