He was raised in Lexington. Now he’s won an international award from the king of Sweden

In June, the king of Sweden awarded the Gregori Aminoff Prize in Crystallography to eight scientists from across the globe who made valuable research contributions to the field, a Tates Creek High School graduate among them.

Recipients included Jian-Ren Shen of Japan, Henry Chapman of Germany and Lexington’s own Dr. Douglas Rees, a 1970 graduate of Tates Creek High School and chemistry professor at the California Institute of Technology.

“The Gregori Aminoff Prize is intended to reward a documented, individual contribution in the field of crystallography, including areas concerned with the dynamics of the formation and dissolution of crystal structures,” according to The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which presents the prize.

It is awarded annually.

A Lexington-raised scholar

As Rees tells it, Lexington public schools played an integral role in his life from a young age. His family moved to Lexington when his father took a position as a doctor at the University of Kentucky’s medical center around 1960, and Rees met his wife in junior high school.

He went on to attend Tates Creek High School, where Rees said he was thoroughly prepared for his undergraduate career at Yale University.

“At Tates Creek, I had some really great teachers, actually in a number of things, but certainly in science,” Rees told the Herald-Leader.

Dr. Ben Oldham was Rees’ physics teacher and sports coach at Tates Creek, and he described Rees as “a true renaissance man.”

“While I was a physics teacher at Tates Creek, I was fortunate to encounter a number of excellent thinkers. But Doug distinguished himself by being a true renaissance man,” Oldham wrote in an email. “While engaging in the highest levels of academics, he was thoroughly involved in athletics.”

Along with his pursuit of science in high school, Rees also participated in football, track and weightlifting.

“Those who did not know Doug as a phenomenal scholar just saw Doug as a regular high school student who participated in a plethora of school activities,” Oldham said.

While Rees took many math and science courses, he said his English and typing classes also proved valuable.

“I really had a tremendous education in the Lexington public schools that provided me with a foundation that I could really build on,” Rees said. “I really feel fortunate to have gotten that in my formative years, to have been in Lexington.”

Rees’ former physics teacher said the scientist’s international accolades are no surprise, as he elevated classroom discussions even as a high school student.

“In my own academic career, I taught graduate statistics courses at the University of Kentucky and Georgetown College. I was never associated with a student who demonstrated greater academic curiosity,” Oldham wrote. “He always wanted to take discussions to the next higher level. Doug’s academic achievements should come as no surprise to anyone who knew him well.”

Rees attended Tates Creek in a time when excitement about science education abounded in the U.S., as the Space Race ignited science, math, technology and engineering interest and funding in schools nationwide. He said he always knew he wanted to become some sort of scientist, but his interest in crystallography would develop later in his academic career.

Rees’ education at Tates Creek allowed him to skip a year of math courses and take more advanced science courses at Yale. After graduation from Yale, he worked for a year as a technician in UK’s medical school biochemistry department. He then went on to graduate school at Harvard University, where he worked for William Lipscomb.

Lipscomb, a Lexington native and graduate of UK, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1976. Rees’ love of crystallography and working out the structures of molecules involved in biological processes was born in Lipscomb’s lab.

Rees’ interests further developed during a post-doctorate program at the University of Minnesota, where he learned about nitrogen fixation, which was the key focus of his research that later led him to win the Aminoff prize.

Rees started his career as an independent scientist at the University of California Los Angeles, before moving to the California Institute of Technology in 1989.

Award-winning research

Rees didn’t expect to receive a call from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2019 congratulating him for winning the Gregori Aminoff Prize in Crystallography of 2020 – he had actually been nominating peers for the same award.

“Because it was unexpected, it was pretty exciting,” he said. “Looking at the list of people who had received this award, (there) were a number of sort of like my scientific heroes, so that was pretty cool.”

The award ceremony in Stockholm was scheduled for March 2020, but delayed due to the pandemic. In June, Rees got to shake hands with king of Sweden Carl XVI Gustaf as he finally accepted the award alongside the 2021 and 2022 recipients.

The long-awaited event had a white-tie dress code, and Rees said the collective mood was excited and celebratory. It was held in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ Beijer Hall, where the king of Sweden has awarded Nobel Prizes.

“Just thinking that (the king of Sweden’s) hand had shaken the hand of all these Nobel Prize winners, I got to shake his hand,” Rees said.

After returning from Sweden and visiting family in Lexington this fall, Rees will continue his research at the California Institute of Technology on nitrogen fixation.

“I think it’s one of these things that no matter how much you learn, there’s always more to learn,” Rees said.

As well as being a rewarding scientific puzzle, nitrogen fixation also acts as an illuminating training ground for the next generation of scientific researchers, Rees said.

“There’s nothing really more rewarding than seeing a student blossom in the course of their graduate (studies) or as a post-doc,” Rees said.

Rees said he enjoys working with graduate students and seeing them discover similar passions in crystallography. He emphasizes one major tenant in science as a broader field to all of his students.

“The process of doing science is trying to figure out how things work that we don’t necessarily understand how they work,” he said. “And so trying to be able to work out sort of what’s going on, what’s happening, what’s true.”

The scientific process provides a framework that teaches students how to discern the truth by testing hypotheses. You can be convinced you’ve figured it out, only to review experiment results and find out you had it all wrong.

The scientific method is a valuable tool for researchers, but also more broadly for citizens in an informed society, Rees said.

When he was in Lexington recently visiting family, Rees got the chance to visit “Coach Oldham” and catch up for the first time in a while.

“Doug is one of the best and has never forgotten his roots,” Oldham wrote.

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