On Mar. 1, 2005, the American Chemical Society awarded the Priestley Medal to George A. Olah “to recognize distinguished services to chemistry,” the Society’s most prestigious award.

Olah, who was director of University of Southern California’s Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute, was known throughout the chemistry community for his contributions to organic synthesis and mechanistic chemistry and most notably for his work in carbocation chemistry, for which he won the 1994 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.