The Jeffrey Award: A Report, November, 2006.

Soon after Prof George Jeffrey died in February, 2000, plans were made for setting up a memorial fund. For many years, he was University Professor at the University of Pittsburgh and Chair of the Crystallography Department. As a memorial, my proposal to the Jeffrey family was to set up Jeffrey Awards to assist gifted graduate students in attending the Congresses of the International Union of Crystallography. We agreed that this would be appropriate because Prof Jeffrey had done so much to promote crystallography world wide. His friends, colleagues and former students were to be found in Britain (where he was born), North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australasia. To most of them, he was known as Jeff.

At the time of Jeff's death, I was President of the Pittsburgh Diffraction Society or PDS.

I had also been his colleague at the University of Pittsburgh since 1957. The Jeffrey family agreed with my proposal that funds for the Jeffrey Awards would be administered by the PDS, which had been set up as an independent not-for-profit organization. Accordingly, I solicited funds for the award and there was a generous response. Over the period March through December, 2000 a total of $15,540 was received from 60 donors including the Jeffrey family In addition, Mrs Maureen Jeffrey donated 100 shares of stock in the Chiron Corp, worth about $5000 at the time.

The International Congress of the Union of Crystallography is held every three years. In 2002, four Jeffrey Awards of $US520 each were made to assist students attending the Congress at Geneva, Switzerland. A total of 15 applications were judged by a committee consisting of Profs Helen Berman (Rutgers University), Martin Caffrey (The Ohio State University) and myself as Chair. In 2005, five Jeffrey Awards of $US600 each were made to students attending the Congress at Florence, Italy. Judging of the ten applicants was by Profs Helen Berman, Robert Stewart (Carnegie-Mellon University) and myself as Chair. The next Jeffrey Awards will be made for the Congress at Osaka, Japan in 2008.

At the October 2006 Pittsburgh Diffraction Conference, held at Duquesne University, PDS Treasurer Prof Charles Lake (Indiana Univ. of Penna.) reported that the Jeffrey Fund stood at $14,692.07 (including $657.52 interest from US Treasury Bonds in the current year). In addition, the Jeffrey Fund has $4800.00 from the sale of Chiron stock. This sale was mandated by the sale of Chiron without the option of the PDS being able to buy into the new corporation. The total assets of the Jeffrey Fund are thus $19,492.07.

Bryan Craven,

Member-at-large. PDS Board

and Steward of the Jeffrey Fund.