York U. Chemist Alexandre Shvartsburg Wins Polanyi Prize for Work in Clarifying Molecular Structure of Unknown Gaseous Ions

TORONTO, November 1, 2000 -- York University chemist Alexandre Shvartsburg will receive the John Charles Polanyi Prize on Thursday, November 2 for his work in ion mobility spectrometry, which has significant implications in the field of high-temperature superconductivity and the semiconductor industry.

The Ontario government awards the Polanyi prizes each year to young scholars and researchers planning to continue postdoctoral studies at an Ontario university in the fields of chemistry, literature, physics, physiology or medicine, and economics. Worth $15,000 each, the prizes are named for Canadian scientist, Professor John Charles Polanyi, who received the 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work in reaction dynamics.

"I feel particularly honoured to win this prize in chemistry because it is named after a chemist who did some pretty amazing things in his field," said the 29-year-old Shvartsburg, who joined York University’s chemistry department as a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) postdoctoral fellow one year ago, after receiving his Ph.D from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Shvartsburg’s work in gas phase chemical physics uses mass spectrometry and the property of ‘ion mobility’ to clarify the structure and characteristics of unknown ions in the gas phase. This has implications in the field of high-temperature superconductivity and in the development of increasingly smaller nanometre-size semiconductor devices in the microelectronics industry.

The main advancements in the field of chemistry have been in improving methods of elucidating molecular structure, making them more accurate and reliable. A mass spectrometer is an instrument that can identify unknown compounds, quantify known materials, and clarify the molecular structure and physical properties of ions at very highly specific levels of sensitivity. York University’s Centre for Research in Mass Spectrometry is devoted to fostering more collaborative research in this field, which touches almost every aspect of scientific endeavour, from biochemistry and atmospheric science to Space exploration.

Shvartsburg was born and raised in Moscow and majored in physics and chemistry at the Moscow State University and Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys, before moving to the United States to study at the University of Nevada in Reno. He says he was attracted to York’s chemistry department by the international reputation of its chair, Professor Diethard Bohme, who has published extensively in the field of gas-phase ion chemistry, and that of his collaborator, Professor Michael Siu, who has contributed significantly to the fundamentals of electrospray mass spectrometry and whose laboratory houses some of the most advanced instrumentation in the field. Siu holds the NSERC/MDS Sciex Industrial Research Chair in Analytical Mass Spectrometry at York, a $2-million research program funded by York, NSERC, and MDS Sciex, a world leader in the design and manufacture of mass spectrometers.

The recipients of this year’s Polanyi Prizes will be honoured on Thursday, November 2 at 11:15 a.m. at a reception at the University of Toronto, Massey College, 4 Devonshire Place, in the presence of The Honourable Hilary M. Weston, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario.

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For further information, please contact:

Alex Shvartsburg
Dept. of Chemistry
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 40048
ashvarts@yorku.ca

Susan Bigelow
Media Relations
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 22091
sbigelow@yorku.ca
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