The College of Science announced the founding of the Rev. Joseph Carrier, C.S.C., Science Medal in the fall of 2022.
The most prestigious award presented by the college, the medal recognizes sustained, outstanding achievements in any field of science.
“In creating the Rev. Carrier Medal, we will honor world-class achievement in the sciences and inspire Notre Dame students to strive for the same level of greatness as that of Father Carrier and our medalists,” said Santiago Schnell, the William K. Warren Dean of the College of Science.
The annual medal and international recognition enhances the prominence and stature of science in our society. The award alternates each year between the mathematical, physical, chemical and biological sciences, and is also accompanied by a monetary award. Its namesake is Rev. Joseph Celestine Basile Carrier, C.S.C., who is recognized as the first director of the science program at the University in 1865, when the College of Science was established as a department.
Each year, the Rev. Carrier medalist gives a public lecture on campus as part of the award presentation. September 9, 2024, marked the third annual ceremony and lecture. Donna Strickland, Ph.D., Thomas C. Südhof, M.D., and Michael Levitt, Ph.D., were the 2022, 2023, and 2024 recipients, respectively.
2022: Donna Strickland
Strickland won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for her part in inventing a technique called chirped pulse amplification, which has allowed doctors to perform corrective eye surgery and manufacturers to cut glass for cell phones. She shared the 2018 prize with her doctoral adviser, Gérard Mourou, for work they published in 1985 while she was at the University of Rochester in New York.
“Professor Strickland has changed modern science and helped to revolutionize laser physics,” Schnell said. “Thanks to her discoveries, laser technology allows humanity to tackle new and challenging scientific and technological problems. We are now able to explore complex interactions between light and matter, accelerate atomic particles, or develop new sources of radiation to treat cancers.”
Strickland was the third woman, after Marie Curie in 1903 and Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963, to win the Nobel Prize in physics. Andrea Ghez later won the prize in 2020.
Strickland is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Companion of the Order of Canada, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She is also an honorary fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Physics.
2023: Thomas C. Südhof, M.D.
Südhof, one of the recipients for the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, is currently Stanford University’s Avram Goldstein Professor Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and serves as professor in the Department of Molecular & Cellular Physiology and of Neurosurgery as well as in the Department of Neurology & Neurological Sciences and of Psychiatry & Behavioral Science.
His 2013 Nobel Prize was awarded for his work from the 1990s in which he studied sac-like structures, called vesicles, that transport substances to different places inside the cell and then send molecules from the cell’s surface as signals to other cells in the body. By studying brain cells from mice, he showed how vesicles are held in place, ready to release signal-bearing molecules at the right moment, according to the Nobel Prize website. He shared the prize that year with James E. Rothman and Randy W. Schekman.
Südhof’s broad research question now is to discover how synapses — the points between neurons and the parts in which neurons form contacts that permit and process information — are formed. He’s also researching how neurons “know” which other neurons to form synapses with for a healthy brain.
2024: Michael Levitt, Ph.D.
Levitt won a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2013, shared with Martin Karplus and Arieh Warshel, for developing the first method to calculate chemical reactions using computers — while integrating features of classical physical and quantum mechanics. Their work, the majority of which was performed in the 1970s, led to new insights into how proteins fold or misfold, and how enzymes catalyze. By looking at the structure of molecules, the trio revolutionized the field of biochemistry and research into the structural basis of diseases.
Levitt started his career in computers during the 1960s when they were as large as rooms. Born in Pretoria, South Africa, he earned his undergraduate degree in physics at King’s College in London, and his doctoral degree in computational biology from the University of Cambridge.
Levitt, now the Robert W. and Vivian K. Cahill Professor of Cancer Research at Stanford, said he was honored and pleasantly surprised to be named the 2024 Carrier Medal recipient.
“Usually, after the Nobel Prize, you don’t get prizes … and I was very complimented,” he said. “This is, I think, the largest American prize I have ever received.”
The History Behind the Medal
Father Carrier was born in France in 1833 and was interested in the natural sciences from an early age. He immigrated to the United States, joined Notre Dame in 1860, and was ordained in 1861. Shortly thereafter, Father Carrier was assigned to serve as an Army chaplain from 1863 to 1865 during the Civil War.
He solidified the science program at the University of Notre Dame, which at that time was a six-year program that included two preparatory years and four collegiate years.
An accomplished and respected botanist, Rev. Carrier founded the natural science museum and herbarium at Notre Dame, curating thousands of specimens from around the world.
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Story by Samantha Keller