On Mar. 19, 2018, the Priestley Medal was awarded to Geraldine Richmond by the American Chemical Society “to recognize distinguished services to chemistry.”

Richmond’s University of Oregon lab’s work in the late 1980s and early ’90s used the nonlinear spectroscopy technique called second-harmonic generation (SHG) to study solid-liquid interfaces. Later, she would move almost exclusively to using a related technique, vibrational sum frequency spectroscopy (VSFS), to study the air-water and oil-water interfaces.

Geraldine (Geri) Richmond is the Presidential Chair in Science and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oregon where she has been since 1985.