Argonne’s Crabtree elected to National Academy of Sciences

ARGONNE, Ill. (April 2008) – George W. Crabtree, a senior scientist and administrator at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for his excellence in original scientific research. Membership in the NAS is one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer in the United States. Crabtree will be inducted into the academy next April during its 146th annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Crabtree, elected along with 71 others, brings the number of Argonne researchers elected to NAS to three. There are currently just over 2,000 active NAS members. Among the NAS’s renowned members are Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Thomas Edison, Orville Wright, and Alexander Graham Bell. More than180 living NAS members have won Nobel Prizes.

Crabtree is director of Argonne’s Materials Science Division and holds the title of Argonne Distinguished Fellow, the laboratory’s highest scientific and engineering rank. The title, held by fewer than 30 Argonne employees, is comparable in stature to an endowed chair at a top-ranked university and recognizes exceptional contributions in a person’s field.

Crabtree is a noted expert in the field of superconductive materials. He has won numerous awards for his pioneering research in the field and his work has been frequently cited by other researchers. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Condensed Matter Physics from University of Illinois at Chicago, an M.S. degree in Solid State Physics from the University of Washington and a B.S. degree in Science Engineering from Northwestern University.