Two NU professors were awarded the National Medal of Science from President George W. Bush. That's kind of like being awarded the Spelling Bee trophy by Dan Quayle, the skeet shooting championship from Dick Cheney or the Pulitzer Prize by Paris Hilton. But I digress.

The two profs were Jan D. Achenbach (above) and Tobin J. Marks.

Achenbach, according to NU's Web site, received the award for "his seminal contributions to engineering research and education in the area of wave propagation in solids and for pioneering the field of quantitative non-destructive evaluation." Right.

Marks, for "pioneering research in the areas of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, organo-f-element chemistry, new electronic and photonic materials, and diverse areas of coordination and solid state chemistry."

Now, I can't figure out what either of those are, but I'm guessing it doesn't have anything to do with stem cell research. Just a hunch.