Professor Randall Goldsmith of the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Chemistry has been named a Guggenheim Fellow by the Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The board made its announcement this week of the appointment of the 101st class of Guggenheim Fellows, including 223 distinguished individuals working across 55 disciplines. Chosen through a rigorous application and peer review process from a pool of nearly 5,000 applicants, the Class of 2026 Guggenheim Fellows was tapped based on both prior career achievement and exceptional promise. As established in 1925 by founder Senator Simon Guggenheim, each Fellow receives a monetary stipend to pursue independent work at the highest level under “the freest possible conditions.”
Goldsmith earned a Bachelor’s of Arts degree from Cornell University (‘02), a Ph.D. from Northwestern University (‘07), and performed postdoctoral research at Stanford University. He joined the UW–Madison Department of Chemistry in the fall of 2011 as an assistant professor of physical chemistry, though his research spans physical, analytical, materials, and inorganic chemistry, as well as photonics and biophysics. This year, Goldsmith was also selected as the recipient of the 2026 American Chemical Society (ACS) Division of Analytical Chemistry Award in Chemical Instrumentation, a national honor recognizing transformative contributions to the development and advancement of modern chemical instrumentation. In 2022, he was named a Schmidt Sciences Polymath, an honor for which he was chosen based on creative interdisciplinary research, and he will earn $2.5 million over five years to help fund his research group.
Goldsmith is best known for making measurements on individual molecules—literally, one molecule at a time— a perspective he cultivated in the laboratory of Professor W.E. Moerner at Stanford University, who would go on to win the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for single-molecule spectroscopy. This “molecule by molecule” perspective means Goldsmith prefers to focus on measuring the characteristics of single molecules and using that perspective to understand chemical behavior, rather than making the measurement on the whole distribution. Goldsmith likens this perspective to listening to a musician, “If you hear one musician, you can hear and appreciate their song,” he explains. “Whereas, if you tried to listen to a dozen musicians all singing different songs, all you would hear is noise.”
A major feature of Goldsmith’s approach is to use photonic materials, materials that fundamentally alter the properties of light. That light can then be deployed to make new and powerful measurements on single molecules. Goldsmith’s research applies these advanced techniques to reveal hidden behaviors in a diverse array of chemical systems: molecular catalysts used to make drugs, biomolecules like proteins and DNA, and polymers that form the materials around us. According to Goldsmith, “All of these molecules have songs to sing!”
“Our new class of Guggenheim Fellows is representative of the world’s best thinkers, innovators, and creators in art, science, and scholarship,” said Edward Hirsch, award-winning poet and President of the Guggenheim Foundation. “As the Foundation enters its second century and looks to the future, I feel confident that this new class of 223 individuals will do bold and inspiring work, undaunted by the challenges ahead. We are honored to support their visionary contributions.”
For Goldsmith, the fellowship means his creativity is being recognized at a new level. “The Guggenheim Foundation is well-known for recognizing creativity in art, but there is a creative spirit that permeates physical sciences as well, to look at nature from a different perspective,” he reflects. “To be able to join this cohort of Guggenheim Fellows is absolutely humbling and so, so cool. These are people who, in their communities, are as adventurous as they come.”
Goldsmith’s most recent work involves label-free single-molecule detection schemes that can provide key molecular information by detecting biomolecules like proteins and DNA, without attaching any labels or markers to them. The process involves passing light through a very sensitive photonic device called an optical microcavity—similar to two mirrors pointed at each other, forcing light to bounce back and forth—and watching for tiny changes when a single molecule passes through. The method can distinguish between very similar molecules that differ only by subtle differences in size. It is sensitive enough to detect and even differentiate single amino acids —the basic building blocks of proteins. Each detection event shows up as a brief, distinctive signal. Because it is ultra-sensitive, label-free, and able to tell molecules apart, this technology could become an important new tool for reading and sequencing proteins, a major outstanding challenge in biotechnology.
About the Guggenheim Foundation:
Created and initially funded in 1925 by US Senator Simon and Olga Guggenheim in memory of their son John Simon, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has sought to “further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions.”
Since its establishment, the Guggenheim Foundation has granted nearly $450 million in Fellowships to more than 19,000 individuals, among whom are more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award, and other internationally recognized honors. The broad range of fields of study is a unique characteristic of the Fellowship program. The Fellowship is application-based and open to U.S. and Canadian citizens or permanent residents.