This award was established by the Eastern New York ACS section executive committee in 1976. The name of the award, Buck-Whitney, was chosen to recognize two of the most eminent research directors in the section.

Johannes Buck was associate director and subsequently director of research at Sterling Winthrop (SWRI) from 1942 until his death in 1956. Born in England in 1895, he received his Ph.D. working for Heilbron at the University of Liverpool in 1922. He continued his research working for Perkins until 1924. He taught at Yale and Duke until 1929. He then became head of the organic chemistry section of Wellcome Research Labs until 1942.

Willis R. Whitney was director of research at General Electric Corporate Research & Development (GE CRD) from 1900 until his retirement in 1932. He was born in 1868 in Jamestown, NY. He was educated at MIT and received his doctorate at the University of Leipzig. He then taught at MIT. He cam to Schenectady, NY, in 1900 with doubts whether there would be enough challenging problems in the GE Company to hold his interest. For several years, he worked on a part-time basis. He was a charter member of our section, was first chair of the section, and in the following year became national president of the ACS.

The purpose of the award is to recognize excellent original contributions to pure and applied chemistry. The recipient is preferably someone who has not yet achieved national recognition as evidenced by a national award from the ACS. The recipient is expected to deliver an address before the meeting at which the award is made. Past recipients of the Buck-Whitney Award have gone on to win further awards, even the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, as demonstrated in 1999 by Ahmed Zewail.

A fund, started with donations from SWRI and GE CRD, was established. It provides a bronze medal, a cash award and an expense stipend for the recipient.

1976	Paul Lauterbur	SUNY Stony Brook
1977	Norman L. Wendler	Merck, Sharp & Dohme
1978	William A. Goddard	California Institute of Technology
1979	James C. Martin	Illinois
1980	Jack C. Freed	Cornell
1983	Kelvin K. Ogilvie	McGill
1985	Ahmed H. Zewail	California Institute of Technology
1988	Malcolm C. Chisholm	Indiana University
1989	Paul A. Bartlett	University of California, Berkeley
1991	Kenneth D. Karlin	Johns Hopkins
1993	Peter B. Armentrout	Utah
1995	Steven C. Zimmerman	Illinois
1997	Richard Barry Kaner	UCLA
1999	Frank V. Bright	SUNY Buffalo
2003	Thomas Szyperski	SUNY Buffalo
2005	Kathryn Uhrich	Rutgers University