United States Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced today the winners of the 2009 E.O. Lawrence Award for their outstanding contributions in research and development supporting the Department of Energy and its missions. The six winners named today will receive a gold medal, a citation and $50,000. Winners will be honored at a ceremony in Washington, DC early next year. "The contributions made by these researchers to advance the national, economic and energy security of the United States are wide-ranging and meaningful," Secretary Chu said. "I congratulate the winners and look forward to their discoveries still to come." The Lawrence Award was established in 1959 to honor the memory of Dr. Ernest Orlando Lawrence who invented the cyclotron (a particle accelerator), and after whom two major Energy Department laboratories in Berkeley and Livermore, California are named.