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Alan Jay Heeger
Born	January 22, 1936 (1936-01-22) (age 73) Sioux City, Iowa, USA
Nationality	United States
Fields	Physics, Chemistry
Institutions	University of Pennsylvania University of California, Santa Barbara
Alma mater	University of Nebraska University of California, Berkeley
Doctoral advisor	Alan Portis
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Chemistry Balzan Prize

Alan Jay Heeger (born January 22, 1936) is an American physicist, academic and Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry.

Heeger was born in Sioux City, Iowa to a Jewish family. He earned a B.S. in physics and mathematics from the University of Nebraska in 1957, and a Ph.D in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1961. From 1962-1982 he was on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. In 1982 he commenced his present appointment as a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research has led to the formation of numerous start-up companies including Uniax, Konarka, and Sirigen, founded in 2003 by Guillermo C. Bazan, Patrick J. Dietzen, Brent S. Gaylord. Alan Heeger was a founder of Uniax, which was acquired by DuPont.

He won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2000 along with Alan G. MacDiarmid and Hideki Shirakawa "for their discovery and development of conductive polymers;" he had won the Oliver E. Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society in 1983 and, in 1995, the Balzan Prize for Science of Non-Biological Materials.

His sons are the neuroscientist David Heeger and the immunologist Peter Heeger.

External links

• Curriculum Vitae of Alan J. Heeger, webpage posted at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Retrieved November 18, 2007.
• Heeger Nobel Prize lecture
• Free to view video interview, Harry Kroto NL talks to Alan Heeger provided by the Vega Science Trust.
• UCSB profile
• Nobel Prize Documentation
• Photos and video from presentation in Brno University of Technology, Europe