Stuart A. Rice

Rice's most prestigious award is the National Medal of Science, the highest scientific prize awarded in the United States, in 1999. He was awarded the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 2011, along with Krzysztof Matyjaszewski and Ching Tang. He is a Fellow of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Society. In 1970 Rice was awarded the Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the nation’s oldest prize for undergraduate teaching, a highly esteemed faculty award at The University of Chicago.

Rice has served the university in a wide variety of capacities during his fifty-seven year tenure. He served as the director of the James Franck Institute (the university's center for physical chemistry and condensed matter physics) from 1961 to 1967. He was Chairman of the Department of Chemistry from 1971 to 1976 and was Dean of the Physical Sciences Division from 1981 to 1995. He served as Dean for the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago from October 2006 through October 2010 and as Interim President of the Institute from October 2010 to April 2013.

Stuart Rice attended the Bronx High School of Science, received his bachelor's degree in 1952 from Brooklyn College, and earned his master's and doctorate from Harvard University in 1954 and 1955, respectively. He was almost unable to attend graduate school due to contracting tuberculosis, but was cured of the disease through an experimental treatment of isoniazid and streptomycin. He remained at Harvard as a Junior Fellow for three years, although he spent the last two years of the fellowship doing research work at Yale University's Chemistry Department. After the fellowship, he joined the faculty of The University of Chicago in 1957, where he has remained since.

Rice was married to Marian Coopersmith from 1952 until her death in 1994.

Stuart Alan Rice (born January 6, 1932) is an American theoretical chemist and physical chemist. He is well known as a theoretical chemist who also does experimental research, having spent much of his career working in multiple areas of physical chemistry. He is currently the Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. During his tenure at the University of Chicago, Rice has trained more than 100 Ph.D. students and postdoctoral researchers. He received the National Medal of Science in 1999.