H.C. Ørsted Gold Medal

World-famous organic chemist and former Thanks to Scandinavia (TTS)  recipient Karl Anker Jorgensen, PhD, recently received the H.C. Ørsted Gold Medal from the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences & Letters.

In 1985, TTS granted Dr. Jorgensen a scholarship to study at Cornell. In an interview with TTS, he says this experience “changed my life completely…. It enabled me to pursue post-doctoral studies in the U.S., an experience few Scandinavian scientists were able to have at the time…. It’s a joy for me to be able to pay my debt to TTS forward by providing [my students at Aarhus University] with the best mentoring experience possible.”

The H.C. Ørsted Gold Medal and prize was presented by Her Majesty the Queen of the Royal Danish Science Company on 16 October 2019. It was not an ordinary job for the Queen as the medal has been given only 17 times in 110 years, reflecting the magnitude of Dr. Jorgensen’s ground-breaking research in catalytic chemistry.

The gold medal is awarded for excellent scientific work in the fields of physics and chemistry. The medal is rarely awarded. Most recently, in 1989, it was awarded to Professor Thor A. Bak. The first recipient was the inventor of Phskalaen, Professor S.P.L. Sørensen in 1909. Among the beneficiaries are also two Nobel laureates, Niels Bohr (1924) and Aage Bohr (1970).