Alan Heeger
Professor of Physics
University of California, Santa Barbara

Dr. Alan Heeger obtained his B.S. with High Distinction from the University of Nebraska in 1957 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1961. Dr. Heeger has won numerous awards including 1995 Balzan Prize, "Science of New Materials", Bern, Switzerland, 1998 Doctor of Faculty of Science ( H.C.) Abo Akademi University, Finland, 2000 Fellow, Institute of Physics, UK and the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Heeger shared the Nobel Prize for his role in the revolutionary discovery that plastics can have the properties of metals and semiconductors, a finding that created an important new field of research. A member of the UCSB faculty since 1982, Professor Heeger was director of the Institute for Polymers and Organic Solids for 17 years, until 1999. The recipient of many international honors and awards, he is a fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. In 2003 he was named to a University of California Presidential Chair, an honor. Return to top reserved for the institution's most distinguished scholars.