Jaqueline Barton

Early life and education Jacqueline Ann Kapelman was born on May 7, 1952, in New York City. Her father served in the Assembly for nearly a decade before serving as a trial judge in the New York Supreme Court next two decades. Her father was one of the trial judges in the Son of Sam serial murder case.

Jacqueline Kapelman attended Riverdale Country School for Girls in Riverdale, New York, where her math teacher, Mrs. Rosenberg, insisted that she be allowed to take calculus at the boys' school. Her interest in chemistry began at Barnard College, where she studied physical chemistry with Bernice Segal. She loved laboratory work and chemical transformations and found Segal an inspiration as a teacher. During her last year at Barnard she married first year medical student Donald J. Barton, receiving her B.A. from Barnard College as Jacqueline Kapelman Barton, summa cum laude, in 1974.

She then studied inorganic chemistry at Columbia University under the supervision of Stephen J. Lippard. While at Columbia she began studying transition-metal complexes and their possible applications to chemotherapy.

Career and research

After earning her Ph.D. from Columbia in 1979, Barton held post-doctoral appointments at Bell Labs and Yale University, where she worked with Robert G. Shulman. She used nuclear magnetic resonance imaging technology to examine the metabolism of yeast cells. and was the first woman to receive tenure in the chemistry department at Columbia. She was named chair of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering of California Institute of Technology, effective July 1, 2009.

Barton was a Member of the Board of Directors of Dow Chemical for more than twenty years. She has also served on the Gilead Sciences Scientific Advisory Board (1989–2008) and has been a member of Gilead's Board of Directors since 2018. who is also a National Medal of Science winner. She has two children, a daughter, Elizabeth (born in 1991), Other awards include:

Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation (1985), first woman recipient Fresenius Award from Phi Lambda Upsilon (1986), first woman recipient Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry by the American Chemical Society (1987) American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry (1988), first woman recipient Mayor of New York's Award in Science and Technology (1988) American Chemical Society Baekeland Medal (1991), first woman recipient Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991) MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (1991) Garvan Medal of the American Chemical Society (1992) Tolman Award of the American Chemical Society (1994), first woman recipient Havinga Medal (1995) Paul Karrer Gold Medal (1996), first woman recipient Skidmore College honorary Doctor of Laws degree (1997) Nichols Medal of the American Chemical Society (1997), first woman recipient Weizmann Women & Science Award (1998) elected American Philosophical Society (2000) Ronald Breslow Award in Biomimetic Chemistry from the American Chemical Society (2003) Yale University honorary Doctor of Science degree (2005) Hamilton College honorary Doctor of Science degree (2005) ACS Gibbs Medal (2006) Linus Pauling Award (2007) F.A. Cotton Medal for Excellence in Chemical Research of the American Chemical Society (2007) National Medal of Science (2011) elected Institute of Medicine (2012) Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS) (2014) Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2014) American Institute of Chemists Gold Medal (2015) Priestley Medal (2015) Centenary Prize (2018) from the Royal Society of Chemistry Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (2018) NAS Award in Chemical Sciences (2019)

Theodore Richards Award, Northeastern Section, American Chemical Society (2021) Welch Award in Chemistry (Robert A. Welch Foundation) (2023)