The Polymer Science and Engineering Department has been flexing its chemical bonds after two more of its faculty won prestigious honors. William MacKnight became the seventh campus professor elected to the National Academy of Engineering. This year the academy selected 84 new members for what is considered one of the highest professional distinctions in the field. Academy membership is awarded only to those who have made “important contributions to engineering theory and practice.” In 1966 MacKnight was one of a small group of faculty responsible for building the Polymer Science and Engineering Program from little more than a few synthetic molecules. The academy is honoring him for his pioneering research in relating the properties of polymers and polymer blends to their chemical and physical structure. MacKnight has also won an American Chemical Society Award in Polymer Chemistry, a UMass Faculty Fellowship Award and the Ford Prize in High Polymer Physics. In addition, he plays a mean fiddle, having studied violin at the Eastman School of Music and Princeton University. In another piece of good fortune for the department, Murugappan Muthukumar has won the prestigious 1998 High Polymer Physics Prize from the American Physical Society. Called by his colleagues “one of the leading polymer theoreticians in the world,” Muthu-kumar’s current research applies concepts of polymer physics to biology and medicine, including, for example, protein folding, cell recognition and the self-organization of biological structures. “Basically, it’s borrowing ideas from Mother Nature,” he says. While picking Mother Nature’s pockets, Muthukumar has also won the Best Teacher Award in his department 11 times, delivered a Distinguished Faculty Lecture, and received a 1997 Chancellor’s medal.