in May 2010, at the university are named after him. Awarded the 1999 American Chemical Society Award in Materials Chemistry. In 2000 the Royal Society of New Zealand awarded him its top honour, the Rutherford Medal. In 2002, he was elected a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. In the 2002 New Year Honours, MacDiarmid was appointed to the Order of New Zealand, which is the highest honour the country awards. MacDiarmid was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2003 In 2004, he received the Friendship Award, the highest honour of the People's Republic of China for foreign experts. The Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute at the University of Texas at Dallas was named after him posthumously in 2007. The Alan G. MacDiarmid Institute at Jilin University in China was named after him since 2001. MacDiarmid Place in Lower Hutt, built in 2013 on the grounds of the closed Waiwhetu School of which he was a pupil, is named after Alan MacDiarmid. Personal life Towards the end of his life, MacDiarmid was ill with myelodysplastic syndrome. In early February 2007 he was planning to travel back to New Zealand, when he fell down the stairs in his home in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, and died on 7 February 2007. He is buried at Arlington Cemetery in Drexel Hill. MacDiarmid's first wife, Marian Mathieu, who he had married in 1954, died in 1990. He is survived by four children: Heather McConnell, Dawn Hazelett, Duncan MacDiarmid and Gail Williams, from their marriage and nine grandchildren: Dr. Sean McConnell, Dr. Ryan McConnell, Rebecca McConnell, Dr. Clayton Hazelett, Wesley Hazelett, Langston MacDiarmid, Aubree Williams, Austin Williams and George Williams. MacDiarmid was also survived by his second wife, Gayl Gentile, whom he married in 2005; she died in 2014. MacDiarmid was a first cousin of New Zealand expatriate painter Douglas MacDiarmid. The year after Alan received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, Douglas painted a portrait of his cousin for the New Zealand Portrait Gallery. MacDiarmid was also active as a naturist and nudist, and considered himself a sun-worshipper and keen waterskier. References External links including the Nobel Lecture Synthetic Metals": A Novel Role for Organic Polymers McDiarmid Institute Web Site from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography MacDiarmid's Page at The University of Texas at Dallas MacDiarmid's page at the University of Pennsylvania New Zealand Edge