Israel’s Bar-Ilan University bestowed an honorary doctorate upon Academia Sinica President Emeritus Yuan-Tseh Lee earlier in June, “in recognition of his ground-breaking work on the dynamics of chemical elementary processes, his major contribution toward advancing the Taiwanese higher education system, and his efforts to promote scientific interaction between Taiwan and Israel.” An award ceremony to confer the honor was held on June 3.

Academician Lee was President of Academia Sinica from 1994 to 2006. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1986 along with John C. Polanyi and Dudley R. Herschbach.

Academician Lee was born in Hsinchu, Taiwan. He received a B.S. from the National Taiwan University, an M.S. from Tsinghua University, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1967 Lee joined the Harvard University group working on molecular beam experiments under Dudley Herschbach. After being appointed assistant professor at the University of Chicago in 1968, Lee rapidly made his laboratory the North American capital of molecular beam study.

In 1994, he returned to Taiwan to serve as President of Academia Sinica. During his dozen year tenure, Prof. Lee worked hard to improve the quality of research in the Academy. Research conducted at Academia Sinica in several fields now rivals the best work done in other parts of the world. Since his return to Taiwan, Academician Lee has also taken an active role in promoting scientific and cultural developments in Taiwan.

Academician Lee has received numerous awards and honors. In addition to the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, he has received the U.S. National Medal of Science, the Faraday Medal and Prize from the Royal Chemical Society of Great Britain, and the Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Medal from the Indian National Science Academy. He has also been awarded the Ernest O. Lawrence Award of the U.S. Department of Energy, the Harrison Howe Award, and the Peter Debye Award of Physical Chemistry from the American Chemical Society.

He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a foreign member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, the Indian Academy of Sciences, the Korean Academy of Science and Technology, the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, the Japanese Academy, and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He is also a member of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The current award is the 35th honorary doctoral degree that Academician Lee has received from universities around the world.