This award honours the memory of John and Martha Morris, the late parents of Peter Morris, the Deputy Editor of Ambix who has contributed the endowment for this award.

The Morris Award is administered by a sub-committee on behalf of SHAC. The recipient chosen to receive the Morris Award will be expected to deliver a lecture at a meeting of SHAC, where the awardee will be presented with an appropriate framed photograph, picture or document and the sum of £300. The award is international in scope, and nominations are invited from anywhere in the world.

The Society has awarded the second John and Martha Morris Award for the History of Modern Chemistry and the Chemical Industry to Professor Mary Jo Nye, Horning Professor in the Humanities and Professor of History Emeritus, History of Modern Physical Sciences, in the Department of History, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon. Professor Nye has been given this award for her path-breaking work on the history of modern physical chemistry, most recently her acclaimed biography of Michael Polyani. Professor Nye will give the Morris Lecture at the 9th International Conference for the History of Chemistry in Uppsala, Sweden, in August 2013, and the award will then be presented to her at a reception.

Professor Nye completed her undergraduate studies at Vanderbuilt University and the University of Wisconsin, taking her PhD in History of Science at the University of Wisconsin. From 1970 she taught at the University of Oklahoma, where she was named George Lynn Cross Researh Professor in the History of Science in 1991. She was appointed a Thomas Hart and Mary Jones Horning Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History at OSU in 1994. Her research interests include the history of chemistry and physics since the eighteenth century in western Europe, the UK and the United States; the social and cultural history of science, including laboratory science, university education, and the political activities of scientists; and the philosophy of science, especially relations between theory and evidence. Nye is currently working on further aspects of the work of Michael Polyani, and on the styles of research collaboration in the laboratories of Linus Pauling and other modern chemists.

The first Morris Award was given to Professor Raymond Stokes (University of Glasgow) for his path-breaking work on the German chemical industry.