2026 Skolnik AWARDED TO DR. ANTONY WilLIAMS

The American Chemical Society’s Division of Chemical Information (CINF) is pleased to announce that Dr. Antony Williams has been selected to receive the 2026 Herman Skolnik Award for his outstanding contributions to the dissemination of chemical information. In particular, he led the development of ChemSpider (www.chemspider.com), a freely available and remarkably comprehensive database that has become a go-to source for reliable information about chemical structures. He led development of the CompTox Chemical Dashboard (CCD) project at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for six years and 11 releases and continues to provide the team with chemistry data.

Dr. Williams obtained his BSc from the University of Liverpool and his PhD from the University of London, where his doctoral research focused on using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to study molecular motion in lubricants under high pressure. He did postdoctoral work on using electron spin resonance (ESR) to study radicals trapped in single crystals at the National Research Council in Ottawa, Canada, then joined the University of Ottawa as their NMR Facility Manager.

He moved to Rochester NY to work for Eastman Kodak, where he led the NMR Technology laboratory in their deployment of spectroscopy services across the company. He was also instrumental in the development of WIMS, the first web-based LIMS system. He returned to Canada to work at ACD/Labs in Toronto ON, initially as their NMR Software Product Manager and later as their Chief Scientific Officer.

His work on ChemSpider began as a hobby while he was working at ACD/Labs. The site’s development eventually culminated in its acquisition by the Royal Society of Chemistry in Cambridge UK, which he joined in 2009 as their Vice President of Strategic Development.

In 2015, Dr. Williams left the RSC to focus on communicating the EPA’s chemistry, bioactivity and toxicity data to the scientific community at large, extending his already broad skill base to include matters biological, toxicological and regulatory. Besides initiating the CCD project there, he led the development of its Cheminformatics Modules and the Analytical Methods and Open Spectra database (AMOS).

He has been very active in ACS over the years and held Adjunct positions at several educational institutions over the years, interacting extensively with students on social media and teaching courses and workshops on how to use it. Besides publishing extensively, Dr. Williams was an early contributor to chemistry articles on Wikipedia. He received the Jim Gray Award for eScience in 2012 and the North Carolina ACS Distinguished Teacher Award in 2016. His work on disseminating chemical data across the scientific community has impacted hundreds of thousands of scientists.

The Herman Skolnik Award includes a $3,000 honorarium and a plaque to be presented at a Symposium in Dr. William’s honor that is being organized for the Fall 2026 ACS National Meeting in Chicago IL.