Heegar was elected as a member into the National Academy of Engineering in 2002 for co-founding the field of conducting polymers and for pioneering work in making these novel materials available for technological applications.
Life and career
Heeger was born in Sioux City, Iowa, into a Jewish family. He grew up in Akron, Iowa, where his father owned a general store. At age nine, following his father's death, the family moved to Sioux City.[1]
In October 2010, Heeger participated in the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Lunch with a Laureate program where middle and high school students engage in an informal conversation with a Nobel Prize-winning scientist over a brown-bag lunch.[4] Heeger is also a member of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Advisory Board.[5] Heeger has been a judge of the STAGE International Script Competition three times (2006, 2007, 2010).[6]
"Perhaps the greatest pleasure of being a scientist is to have an abstract idea, then to do an experiment (more often a series of experiments is required) that demonstrates the idea was correct; that is, Nature actually behaves as conceived in the mind of the scientist. This process is the essence of creativity in science. I have been fortunate to have experienced this intense pleasure many times in my life."
Alan J Heeger, Never Lose Your Nerve![7]
Alan J. Heeger on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel lecture December 8, 2000 Semiconducting and Metallic Polymers: The Fourth Generation of Polymeric Materials