Chemistry International
Vol. 22, No. 6
November 2000
William
Horwitz Receives Robert Boyle Medal from Royal Society of Chemistry
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Dr.
William Horwitz
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Dr. William Horwitz, current Associate Member and
former U.S. National Representative on IUPAC's Commission on General
Aspects of Analytical Chemistry (V.I), has received the prestigious
Robert Boyle medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry. His medal citation,
which appeared in the June 2000 edition of Chemistry in Britain, Vol.
36, No. 6, p. 62, reads as follows:
"Distinguished for his contributions to the quality
of analytical measurements and to the statistics of data treatment,
including the discovery of the Horwitz function, which relates the reproducibility
of such measurements to analyte concentrations".
Bill Horwitz's luminous career as a leading analytical
chemist was summarized in the Chemistry in Britain article in the following
words:
William Horwitz is the scientific adviser to the
Office of Special Research Skills at the Center for Food and Applied
Nutrition of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Washington,
DC. He received his first degree from the University of Chicago and
his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. He has spent his entire
professional career of over 57 years with the FDA, beginning as a chemist,
then as chief chemist of the Minneapolis laboratory. After being transferred
to Washington, he directed laboratory investigations on various aspects
of analytical food chemistry and advised on the application of analytical
chemistry to the regulation of foods and drugs. [Editor's Note: Dr.
Horwitz joined the FDA in Minneapolis in 1939 and retired from the FDA
in Washington, DC on 30 June 2000.]
He was executive director of the Association of
Official Analytical Chemists (now AOAC International) for 28 years and
editor of six editions of its Official Methods of Analysis. He is the
U.S. delegate to the FAO/ WHO Codex Committee on Methods of Analysis
and Sampling and is a member or adviser to several other Codex committees.
He was also chairman of the U S. Technical Advisory Group to the International
Standardization Organization (ISO), Technical Committee 34, on Agricultural
Food Products. He was an abstractor and section editor of Foods for
Chemical Abstracts for over 40 years. He has received several awards
from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, including their
superior and distinguished service awards and the Harvey W. Wiley award
of AOAC International. In 1995, AOAC International established the William
Horwitz award, of which Dr. Horwitz was the first recipient. He
is the author of over 140 papers on various aspects of analytical food
and drug chemistry and the reliability of chemical analysis, and he
has lectured on these subjects at many universities and to chemical
societies from Australia to Israel.