The W. David Kingery Award recognizes distinguished lifelong achievements involving multidisciplinary and global contributions to ceramic technology, science, education and art. The award is open to all people worldwide. Nominees must be living at the time of their nomination. Nominees must demonstrate significant achievements in at least two of the following categories: technology, science, education or art.
Winners receive a certificate, glass commemorative piece, and a $5,000 honorarium.
Nomination Process
Nominees must be living at the time of their nomination. Nominees must demonstrate significant achievements in at least two of the following categories: technology, science, education or art. One nominator is required, plus two additional supporters who supply letters of recommendation. Nominations should consist of a letter and completed nomination form giving a full and complete statement of the reasons for proposing the candidate, with a record of the candidate’s professional and industrial achievements in sufficient detail to allow the committee to evaluate the nominee’s worthiness to receive the award. Nominations are active for a total of three years, but the person can then be re-nominated. One award can be given each year.
Award Namesake
W. David Kingery (1926–2000) was a pioneering American materials scientist renowned for transforming ceramics from a craft-based practice into a rigorous scientific discipline. Educated at MIT, where he later became a professor, Kingery laid the theoretical foundation for the field of physical ceramics by applying principles of solid-state physics and crystallography. He developed quantitative models for ceramic properties and advanced processing techniques like sintering. His influential textbook, Introduction to Ceramics, became a cornerstone of ceramic science. Kingery also fostered interdisciplinary research, notably at the University of Arizona, and was honored with numerous awards, including the Kyoto Prize in 1999, recognizing him as the “father of modern ceramics.”
Contact
Erica Zimmerman
ezimmerman@ceramics.org
Award Winners
John C. Mauro
Dr. John C. Mauro is Dorothy Pate Enright Professor and Associate Head for Graduate Education in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University. John earned a Ph.D. in Glass Science from Alfred University and worked at Corning Incorporated for eighteen years. He joined the faculty at Penn State in 2017 and is a world-recognized expert in glass science, statistical mechanics, computational physics, thermodynamics, and the topology of disordered networks.
John is inventor or co-inventor of new glass compositions for Corning, including Corning Gorilla® Glass products. John is a pioneer in the use of physics-based and machine learning models to design new glassy materials. He is the inventor of new models for supercooled liquid and glass viscosity, glass structure and topology, relaxation behavior, and thermal and mechanical properties. Most recently, John is inventor of LionGlass, Penn State’s novel family of glass composition that reduces the carbon footprint of glass manufacturing by >50%.
John is co-author of Fundamentals of Inorganic Glasses, 3rd ed. (Elsevier, 2019), the definitive textbook on glass science and technology, and author of Materials Kinetics: Transport and Rate Phenomena (Elsevier, 2021), the most comprehensive textbook on kinetic phenomena in materials science. John is the author of over 360 peer-reviewed publications and has given over 200 presentations at international conferences and seminars. He has 80 granted U.S. patents and many additional patents pending. John is Editor-in-Chief of Journal of the American Ceramic Society. John is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Inventors, and the World Academy of Ceramics. He is also a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society and the Society of Glass Technology.