UNH Alumnus Named 2006 Priestley Medalist

A UNH alumnus will receive the highest honor from the world’s largest scientific society.

Paul S. Anderson

Paul S. Anderson, of Lansdale, Penn., was named the 2006 Priestley Medalist by the American Chemical Society June 9 for his life of distinguished service to chemistry. The medal will be presented to him at the ACS spring meeting in Atlanta.

A 1963 graduate of UNH’s PhD chemistry program, Anderson is now retired from the pharmaceutical industry. The medicinal chemistry department he led at Merck discovered Crixivan and Sustiva, two antiviral medications responsible for prolonging the lives of millions with HIV-AIDS, and Zocor, a popular cholesterol lowering drug.

During a recent visit to UNH, Anderson credited George Merck, founder of the pharmaceutical company where he was first professionally employed, with imparting to him a philosophy that put people first. “He explained to us that medicine is not for profit, it’s for the patient, and that, so far, the better we have understood that, the better profits have been,” he said.

To bring home that point, Merck invited AIDS activists to meet the scientists searching for new drugs to treat them. “It was an incredibly interesting experience because none of us had ever had exposure to patients, and at that time they didn’t have very good prospects,” said Anderson. “The energy that they gave us to be aggressive and move as fast as we could was just remarkable.”

In recent years, pharmaceutical companies seem to have lost sight of the big picture, said Anderson, but he is hopeful the industry can return to a sharper understanding of its role. “The pharmaceutical industry has become so focused on blockbusters that people have forgotten why we do it,” he said. “You’re doing it to make a contribution to medicine, not because you make a lot of money. If you do it right, you will make a lot of money. … It’s a science driven philosophy, not a business driven one.”

Anderson turned down offers at more prestigious programs in Boston for UNH’s more intimate and directed program, which had only recently started under the guidance of Robert Lyle. An internationally known chemist who taught at UNH for 25 years, Lyle went to the University of North Texas before retiring.

Now in his early eighties, Lyle still keeps in touch with his former student. “He was a very sharp chemist,” he said. “Not only did he have the imagination to picture the kinds of (molecular) configurations needed, but also the ways to synthesize them.”

While others may sing his praises, Anderson, who advanced to the level of Senior Vice President before he retired, attributes his success to recruiting innovative thinkers and helping them work together. “In my case, I was fortunate to work with very good people,” he said.

Anderson said team building is something he learned from Lyle, and he never forgot him. In 2001, he suggested UNH name its new nuclear magnetic resonance imaging center in his mentor’s honor. Anderson had led the fund-raising effort that enabled the university to purchase two powerful NMR spectrometers, giving it some of the most highly sophisticated equipment in the Northeast for investigating molecular structure.

The Priestley Medal is just the latest in a long list of honors for Anderson. He received the National Academy of Sciences Award for Chemistry in Service to Society in 2003—awarded every two years—and the 2002 Perkin Medal from the Society for Chemical Industry. In 2001, he received the ACS Award in Industrial Chemistry and a Doctor of Chemistry Honoris Causa from the University of New Hampshire. He was recently elected to the board of trustees of the Gordon Research Conferences and he currently serves on the board of directors of several companies and the Chemical Heritage Foundation.