Subdivision
| • | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | [X] |
| | 1 | Name: | Dr. R. Stephen Berry | | | Institution: | University of Chicago | | | Year Elected: | 2011 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1931 | | | Death Date: | July 26, 2020 | | | | | | |
R. Stephen Berry was the James Franck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Chicago. He had been at The University of Chicago since 1964; previously he was an Assistant Professor at Yale, and earlier, an Instructor at the University of Michigan. He is a Denver native, and in East High School, a Finalist in what was then the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. In September, 2011, he was inducted into the East High Alumni Heritage Hall. He went to Harvard, where he earned his A.B. and Ph.D., and met Carla Friedman, whom he married in 1955. In his career, he has worked on a variety of subjects ranging from strictly scientific matters to a variety of topics in policy. He has held visiting professorships at other universities, including the University of Copenhagen (1967 and 1979), the Université de Paris-Sud (1979-80), the University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo (1984), and Oxford University (1973-74, 1980 and in 1986-87, as the Newton-Abraham Professor). He spent 1994 at the Freie Universität Berlin as an awardee of the Humboldt Prize. He has close associations with the Aspen Center for Physics (Board of Directors, 1978-84) and was a co-founder of the Telluride Summer Research Center (now Telluride Science Research Center) (Board of Directors, 1984-present; President, 1989-93). In 1983 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and was its Home Secretary from 1999 until 2003. He was also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Vice-President, 1987-90) and is a Foreign Member of the Royal Danish Academy. In 1997, he received the Heyrovsky Medal of the Czech Academy of Sciences. In 2010, he received a Diploma Science Honoris Causa from the Romanian Medical Society. His scientific research has been both theoretical and experimental, in areas of atomic and molecular clusters and chaos, topographies and dynamics of complex potential surfaces, atomic collisions and photoionization, protein dynamics and interactions, and, for many years, finite-time thermodynamics, a new approach to extend thermodynamics toward energy efficiency. His experimental work included studies of negative ions, detection and reactions of transient molecular species, photoionization and other laser-matter interactions. Some of his work outside traditional science has involved interweaving thermodynamics with economics and resource policy, including efficient use of energy. He has sometimes worked since the mid-1970s with issues of science and the law, and with management of scientific data. He has also worked in matters of scientific ethics and of some aspects of national security. His current scientific interests include the dynamics of atomic and molecular clusters, the basis of "guided" protein folding and other "structure-seeking" processes, and the thermodynamics of time-constrained processes and the efficient use of energy. He has been author or coauthor of five books, including one on thermodynamic optimization and one on the total social costs of coal and nuclear power. He was author or coauthor of over 530 published papers. | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Graham R. Fleming | | | Institution: | University of California, Berkeley | | | Year Elected: | 2011 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1949 | | | | | | |
Graham Fleming was appointed UC Berkeley’s Vice Chancellor for Research in April 2009, having previously served as the Deputy Director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Through joint appointments as Melvin Calvin Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at UC Berkeley, and Founding Director of both the Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division and UC Berkeley’s California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), he has re-shaped the intersection of physical and biological sciences, while maintaining his own investigations into ultrafast chemical and biological processes, in particular, the primary steps of photosynthesis. Throughout his administrative career, Fleming has remained a highly active scientific researcher. He has authored or co-authored more than 440 publications and 1 book; and is widely considered to be one of the world's foremost authorities on ultrafast processes.
Born in Barrow, England, in 1949, Fleming earned his Bachelor's of Science degree from the University of Bristol in 1971, and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of London Royal Institute in 1974. Following a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Melbourne, Australia, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1979. There, he rose through the academic ranks to become the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor, a post he held for ten years, starting in 1987. At University of Chicago, he also served for three years as the Chair of the Chemistry Department. In that role, he led the creation of University of Chicago’s first new research institute in more than 50 years, the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics.
In addition to his many other activities, Fleming has given numerous talks around the world on the inter-relation and inter-complexity of energy, climate and photosynthesis. In 2007, Fleming led the effort (with co-chair Mark Ratner) to define Grand Challenges in Basic Energy Science for DOE/BES, resulting in Directing Matter and Energy: Five Challenges for Science and the Imagination.
At present, Graham Fleming is engaged in coordinating energy and climate research at Berkeley, as well as continuing his research in photosynthesis and condensed phase dynamics. | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Kyriacos C. Nicolaou | | | Institution: | Rice University | | | Year Elected: | 2011 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1946 | | | | | | |
K.C. Nicolaou was born in 1946 in Cyprus, where he grew up and went to school until the age of 18. In 1964, he emigrated to England where he spent two years learning English and preparing to enter the university. His advanced studies in chemistry were carried out at the University of London (B.Sc., 1969, Bedford College, First Class Honors; Ph.D. 1972, University College). In 1972, he crossed the Atlantic to the United States and completed postdoctoral appointments at Columbia University (1972-1973) and Harvard University (1973-1976) after which he joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, where he rose through the ranks to become the Rhodes-Thompson Professor of Chemistry. In 1989, he accepted joint appointments at the University of California, San Diego, where he was Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, and The Scripps Research Institute, where he was the Chairman of the Department of Chemistry and the Darlene Shiley Chair in Chemistry and the Aline. W. and L. Skaggs Professorship in Chemical Biology. In July 2013 he moved to Rice University where he is Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and the BioScience Research Collaborative.
One of the world’s leading synthetic organic chemists, Dr. Nicolaou is considered a master of the art of total synthesis. His accomplishments include the synthesis of some of the most complex molecules of nature such as amphotericin B, calicheamicin, Taxol®, brevetoxins A and B, vancomycin, and thiostrepton. In addition to his scientific accomplishments, Dr. Nicolaou is well known for his educational reviews and books. Among his books, the most well-known are the Classics in Total Synthesis series (I, II, III, co-authored with his students Erik Sorensen, Scott Snyder and Jason Chen, respectively) and Molecules That Changed the World (co-authored with his research associate Tamsyn Montagnon). The latter is a delightful and informative coffee table book illustrating the impact of chemistry on society with colorful images and easy to understand language that serves to inspire the youth into the sciences and inform the public about the importance and virtues of science.
For his scientific work, Professor Nicolaou has received numerous awards and honors, including the Humboldt Foundation US Senior Scientist Prize (Germany, 1987), the William H. Nichols Medal, New York Section-American Chemical Society (1996), the Linus Pauling Medal, Oregon, Portland, Puget Sound Sections-American Chemical Society (1996), the Decoration of the Order of the Commander of Honor Medal (bestowed by the President of Greece, 1998), the Gustavus John Esselen Award for Chemistry in the Public Interest, Northeaster Section-American Chemical Society (1998), the Aristeio Bodossaki Prize (Greece, 2004), the A. C. Cope Award, American Chemical Society (2005), the August-Wilhelm-von-Hofmann-Denkmünze Award (Germany, 2008), the Chandler Medal, Columbia University (2008), the Science Award, Ministry of Education and Culture, Cyprus (2010), the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry (2011), and the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2016).
Nicolaou is a Member of the New York Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Foreign Member of the Academy of Athens (Greece), Honorary Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Member of the Royal Society, and holds 12 honorary degrees from universities around the world. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2011. | |
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