EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE: Sunday, March 25, 2012, 12:01 a.m. Eastern TimeNote to journalists: Please report that this research was presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society

Newswise — SAN DIEGO, March 25, 2012 — Nationally renowned science journalist, author, broadcaster and blogger Paul Raeburn will receive the 2012 James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public from the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society, here this week.

Raeburn will participate in a special Presidential Symposium, “Communicating Chemistry to the Public,” which will be held Monday during the ACS’ 243rd National Meeting & Exhibition. The symposium begins at 1:15 p.m. in Room 4 of the San Diego Convention Center and was organized by ACS President Bassam Z. Shakhashiri, Ph.D. The award will be presented during a black-tie banquet and ceremony on Tuesday.

Nominations are open for ACS’ 2013 National Awards. An ACS video series, Prized Science, celebrates how the scientific discoveries honored in the society’s national awards improve everyday life.

One of the oldest and most prestigious accolades in journalism, the award dates to 1955 and consists of $3,000, a gold medallion and a bronze replica of the medallion. ACS named the award for James T. Grady and James H. Stack, former managers of the ACS News Service. Publisher of the Weekly PressPac, the News Service was established in 1919, making ACS one of the first scientific societies with a dedicated function of communicating and explaining science to the public.

The award cites Raeburn’s work as science editor and chief science correspondent at the Associated Press from 1981 to 1996, where thousands of his articles were distributed to more than 1,700 newspapers and 6,000 television and radio stations worldwide. Raeburn then spent seven years as science editor and a senior writer at BusinessWeek. His freelance writing has appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Scientific American, Psychology Today, Self, Technology Review and numerous other publications.

Raeburn currently is a media critic at the Knight Science Journalism Tracker, and he blogs on fathers and families at Psychology Today and at his own Fathers and Families blog. He is a regular panelist and guest host of Talk of the Nation: Science Friday on National Public Radio. Raeburn is the author of three books, including Acquainted with the Night, a memoir of raising children with depression and bipolar disorder. His new book, Why Fathers Matter, will be published by Simon & Schuster in 2013. He is a past president of the National Association of Science Writers and a recipient of its Science in Society award, in addition to many other prizes.

The American Chemical Society is a non-profit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 164,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society contact [email protected].

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