 His "Chemical Reviews" article titled "Solvolytic Displacement Reactions at Saturated Carbon" was influential in the field of physical organic chemistry.Streitwieser is also the author of the widely used university textbook "Introduction to Organic Chemistry" (4th revised ed., 1998, with Heathcock and Kosower, , German translation, "Organische Chemie", ), as well as the autobiography "A Lifetime of Synergy With Theory and Experiment" ()

Streitwieser was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1969 and is an American Chemical Society Fellow.He is the recipient of the ACS Award in Petroleum Chemistry (1967), James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry (1982), the Guggenheim Fellowship (1968), the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (1989), and the Roger Adams Award (2009).