He is a member of the German Chemical Society, The Chemical Society, London, the American Chemical Society, and Sigma Xi. Between 1966 and 1969, he was a Fellow and then an Overseas Fellow of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, and, in 1975, he received a Regents' Summer Faculty Fellowship. He held both an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship (1976–1980) and a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher Scholarship (1978–1983). In 1983, he was awarded the Adolf Windaus Medal of the Georg August-Universität Göttingen, in addition to being selected by Science Digest as one of the "100 Outstanding Young Scientists in America." He was given the Otto Bayer Prize 1990, the ACS Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award 1991, a Japan Society for Promotion of Science Award 1995, the Stiftung Buchkunst Prize (Germany) 1996, an NSF Special Creativity Award 1998, the ACS Edward Leete Award 1999, the Medal of the University Aix-Marseille 2000, and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Rome Tor Vergata 2004.