the Southern Chemist of the Year Award from ACS in 2005, the Honda Innovation Award for Nanocars in 2005, the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1990, and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award in 1989. In 2005, Tour's journal article "Directional Control in Thermally Driven Single-Molecule Nanocars" was ranked the Most Accessed Journal Article by the American Chemical Society. Tour has twice won the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching at Rice University in 2007 and 2012. In 2016, Tour was listed as an ISI highly cited researcher. Pseudoscience advocacy In 2001, Tour was one of a small number of nationally prominent researchers among the five hundred scientists and engineers whose names appeared on the Discovery Institute's petition promoting the pseudoscience of intelligent design, "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism". The petition states "we are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged." The two-sentence statement has been widely used by its sponsor, the Discovery Institute, and some of their supporters in a national campaign to discredit evolution. Tour has at times claimed not to be a proponent of intelligent design, but openly advocates for it in his online videos and interviews with the Discovery Institute. Personal life Tour became a born-again Christian in his first year at Syracuse. He identifies as a Messianic Jew, which is considered a form of evangelical Christianity by the State of Israel and major Jewish movements. He claims that religion plays no part in his scientific work. References External links James Tour Research Group NanoKids Debates Debunk 1959 births Organic chemists Carbon scientists 21st-century American chemists American nanotechnologists Syracuse University alumni Living people Purdue University alumni Intelligent design advocates University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni Stanford University alumni Rice University faculty 20th-century American chemists Scientists from New York City American Christians