John Charles Polanyi PC CC FRSC OOnt FRS (Hungarian: Polányi János Károly; born 23 January 1929) is a German-born Canadian chemist.

[2] According to György Marx, he was one of "The Martians", a group of prominent Hungarian scientists who emigrated to the United States in the first half of the 20th century.

After returning to Britain, Polanyi finished high school and attended university at Manchester, where he received his undergraduate degree in 1949 and his PhD in 1952.

[6] Although his university education was focused in science, he was not convinced it was his calling after finishing high school, when he briefly considered a career as a poet.

[8] Near the end of his stay at NRC, Polanyi worked in Gerhard Herzberg's lab, using spectroscopy to examine vibrational and rotational excitation in iodine molecules.

[8] During Polanyi's time at Princeton University, he worked with Sir Hugh Taylor and his colleagues, Michael Boudart and David Garvin.

He was influenced by studies conducted at Princeton looking at the vibrationally excited reaction products between atomic hydrogen and ozone.

[8] Graduate student Kenneth Cashion was working with Polanyi when they made their first discoveries about chemiluminescence, the light emitted by an atom molecule when it is in an excited state.

[14] Polanyi often accepts speaking engagements to discuss issues relating to social justice, peace and nuclear proliferation, despite his busy research schedule.

[11] He frequently comments on science and public policy issues via the Letters to the Editor and Opinion sections of The Globe and Mail newspaper.

This technique was used to measure weak infrared emissions from a newly formed molecule in order to examine energy disposal during a chemical reaction.

Polanyi said, "There is a very reasonable suspicion that you are so busy doing the things that Nobel Prize winners do that you are actually only giving half your mind to science.

The 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Ernst Ruska, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer for their work in electron microscopes and scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM).

After returning to Toronto, Polanyi and his colleagues looked into the technique and now have four STMs, which they use to picture chemical reactions at the molecular level, rather than using infrared detection and chemiluminescence.

[6] Polanyi was pictured on a Canada Post first class postage stamp on 3 October 2011, issued to salute the International Year of Chemistry.

The award cites Polanyi's seven decades of activism for a nuclear-weapons-free world, for upholding human rights and freedom of speech globally, for public education on the essential role of science in society, and for a visionary approach to bringing about a hopeful, peaceful future.

These prizes are each worth $20,000, and are awarded to young researchers in the province in a postdoctoral fellowship or who have recently started a faculty appointment at an Ontario university.

[30] His writing is not limited to his scientific interests, as he has published over 100 articles on policy, the impact of science on society and armament control.

[6] In 1970, he produced a film entitled Concepts in Reaction Dynamics, and he co-edited a book called The Dangers of Nuclear War.

[6] In 2010, the Toronto District School Board voted to change the name of Sir Sandford Fleming Academy to the John Polanyi Collegiate Institute to coincide with a move to a new location.