Dr. W.E. Moerner, who shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2014, will deliver the Presidential Distinguished Lecture in Pestana Lecture Hall at 1 p.m. Sept. 11. The lecture is open to the public. A reception will precede the lecture at noon.

Dr. Moerner, the Harry S. Mosher Professor in Chemistry and Professor, by courtesy, of Applied Physics at Stanford University, shared the Nobel Prize with two other researchers “for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy.”

Dr. Moerner will be in San Antonio to receive the Julio Palmaz Award for Innovation in Healthcare and the Biosciences. The award, from BioMed SA, a nonprofit corporation, honors individuals who have made significant contributions to advances in San Antonio’s healthcare and bioscience sector. The award was named for Julio Palmaz, M.D., world-renowned inventor of the PalmazA® Stent and professor of radiology at the Health Science Center.

Dr. David. S. Weiss, dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and Dr. James Lechleiter, professor of cellular and structural biology and director of the Optical Imaging Center, nominated Dr. Moerner for the Palmaz Award.

In their nominating letter, the two lauded Dr. Moerner for his “monumental” contributions to science and pointed out that the Health Science Center was the first institution in Texas and only the second in the United States to acquire a STORM, a super resolution microscope that is a direct result of Dr. Moerner’s research.

They also referred to Dr. Moerner’s San Antonio connection, saying that, “amazingly, he is the second recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to have graduated from Jefferson High School, with the first being Robert Floyd Curl Jr., twenty years earlier, for his work on fullerenes.”