Reshef Tenne to receive Von Hippel Award, the Materials Research Society’s highest honor

MRS Press Release

Reshef Tenne to receive Von Hippel Award, the Materials Research Society’s highest honor

October 19, 2023

Press & Public Relations Contact:

Ryan Rebholz
Communications Manager
Materials Research Society

Newswise — WARRENDALE, PA—Reshef Tenne of the Weizmann Institute of Science has been selected to receive the 2023 Von Hippel Award, the highest honor given by the Materials Research Society (MRS). A professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science, he is being honored for spearheading modern research on nano-2D materials through the discovery of nanotube- and fullerene-like inorganic layered compounds. 

Tenne will accept the honor during the 2023 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit in Boston, Massachusetts, and present his lecture, Inorganic Nanotubes: From WS₂ to "Misfit" Layered Compounds, on Tuesday, November 28 at 6:00 pm (ET).   

Conferred annually, the Von Hippel Award recognizes the qualities most prized by materials scientists and engineers—brilliance and originality of intellect, combined with vision that transcends the boundaries of conventional scientific disciplines, as exemplified by the life and work of Arthur von Hippel.  

Tenne studied at Hebrew University from 1966-1976, where he earned his BS, MS and PhD degrees. He was then a postdoctoral student at the Battelle Institute from 1976-79 and joined the Weizmann Institute in 1979. He received tenure in 1985 and was promoted to full professor in 1995. 

At the Weizmann Institute, Tenne served as the head of the Department of Materials and Interfaces from 2000-2007, was the founder and Director of the Helen and Martin Kimmel Center for Nanoscale Science from 2003-2014, and held the inaugural Drake Family Chair of Nanotechnology from 2005-2014. 

For the last 39 years, Tenne’s research has focused on the synthesis and the properties of layered compounds (2D-materials), like WS₂ and MoS₂. In 1992, he discovered that nanoparticles of WS₂ were unstable the platelet form, spontaneously forming fullerene-like structures and inorganic nanotubes at elevated temperatures. He subsequently studied the synthesis of such nanoparticles and their properties in great detail and developed many applications based on these nanostructures. He has published more than 380 papers and nearly 80 invited chapters in books and review articles. 

Tenne has received many awards and recognition for his research. He was elected to the Israel Academy of Sciences in 2011, Academia Europaea in 2012, and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2021. He received the MRS Medal in 2005, the 2020 EMET Prize in exact sciences from the Prime Minister of Israel, and the 2023 ACS Award for the Chemistry of Materials, among other awards.