Subdivision
| • | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | [X] |
| | 21 | Name: | Dr. Jack David Dunitz | | | Institution: | Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich | | | Year Elected: | 1997 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1923 | | | Death Date: | September 12, 2021 | | | | | | |
Jack Dunitz's research interests concentrated on the use of crystal structure analysis as a tool for studying a diversity of chemical problems, such as the structure and reactivity of medium-ring compounds, ion-specificity of natural and synthetic ionophores, and molecular structure-energy relationships. From his laboratory came the method of deriving model pathways for prototypic chemical reactions from the structural information in crystal structures, thus making a connection between the "statics" of crystals and the "dynamics" of reacting chemical systems. Other work in related directions included new interpretations of atomic displacement tensors in crystals in terms of internal molecular motions, and studies of experimental electron density distributions from accurate low-temperature X-ray data. Later in his career, he turned to problems of polymorphism, phase transformations in solids and solid-state chemical reactions. Dr. Dunitz studied chemistry at Glasgow University (Ph.D. 1947) and held research fellowship at Oxford University (1946-1948, 1951-1953), the California Institute of Technology (1948-1951, 1953-1954), the U.S. National Institute of Health (1954-1955) and the Royal Institution, London (1956-1957) before accepting a professorship at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1957. He held that post until his retirement in 1990, when he became Emeritus Professor of Chemical Crystallography. Dr. Dunitz been elected to membership of several learned societies, including the Royal Society (1974) and has received several awards for his work. In 2001 he was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He has more than 300 scientific papers to his credit and is the author of "X-Ray Analysis and the Structure of Organic Molecules" (1979) and "Reflections on Symmetry in Chemistry... and Elsewhere" (1993). Jack Dunitz died on September 12, 2021 at age 98. | |
| 22 | Name: | Professor Peter P. Edwards | | | Institution: | University of Oxford | | | Year Elected: | 2012 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1949 | | | | | | |
Peter P. Edwards is currently Professor and Head of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford, and has held this position since 2003. Born in, England, he received his Ph.D. from Salford University in 1974. He has won a number of awards, including the Liversidge Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry (1998), the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society (2003), and the Corday-Morgan Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2006). He is a member of the Royal Society (1996) and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (2009).
Peter Edwards’s work spans from inorganic and physical chemistry to condensed matter physics in both their purest and most applied aspects. He is the leading chemist studying the metal/insulator transition and superconductivity. He developed and championed a simple criterion for the metal-insulator transition applicable to many systems, including expanded fluid metals, hydrogen in the outer planets, transition metal oxides and doped semi-conductors. Motivated by the size induced metal/insulator transition, he discovered a wide variety of stoichiometrically defined metallic cluster compounds. Before the discovery of cuprates, Edwards identified doped transition metal oxides as possible superconductors, beginning with the superconducting spinel . He later discovered both the mercury-lead-based compounds which held the record high temperature transition and the fluoride-oxide superconductors. Edwards leads the U.K. Sustainable Hydrogen Energy Consortium. His scientific joie de vivre is illustrated by his paper on the materials aspects of Stradivarius violins. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2012. | |
| 23 | Name: | Professor Manfred Eigen | | | Institution: | Max Planck Institute | | | Year Elected: | 1968 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1927 | | | Death Date: | February 6, 2019 | | | | | | |
German biophysicist Manfred Eigen was the director of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. Recognized throughout the world for his outstanding work in the field of chemical kinetics, he received the Nobel Prize in 1967, along with Ronald George Wreyford Norrish and George Porter, for his study of extremely fast chemical reactions induced in response to very short pulses of energy. He also made significant contributions to the theory of the chemical hypercycle, the cyclic linkage of reaction cycles as an explanation for the self-organization of pre-biotic systems. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Dr. Eigen was the recipient of many awards, including the Otto Hahn Prize for Chemistry and Physics and the Kirkwood Medal and Harrison How Award of the American Chemical Society. In addition to his standing as a preeminent scientist, Dr. Eigen was also known for his courteous manner and his love of the piano, which he often played with chamber groups. Manfred Eigen died February 6, 2019 in Goettingen, Germany at the age of 91. | |
| 24 | Name: | Dr. Ben L. Feringa | | | Institution: | Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences; University of Groningen | | | Year Elected: | 2024 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1951 | | | | | | |
Ben L. Feringa obtained his PhD degree at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands under the guidance of Professor Hans Wynberg. After working as a research scientist at Shell in the Netherlands and the UK, he was appointed lecturer and in 1988 full professor at the University of Groningen and named the Jacobus H. van't Hoff Distinguished Professor of Molecular Sciences in 2003. He is member and former vice-president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. He was elected Foreign Honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, The German Academy Leopoldina, the Chinese National Academy of Sciences, Foreign member of the Royal Society (London) and Member of the US National Academy. Ben Feringa is member of European Research Council ERC. In 2008 he was appointed Academy Professor and was knighted by Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands and in 2016 promoted to Commander in the order of the Dutch Lion. Feringa’s research has been recognized with a number of awards including the Koerber European Science Award (2003), the Spinoza Award (2004), the Prelog gold medal (2005), the Norrish Award of the ACS (2007), the Paracelsus medal (2008), the Chirality medal (2009),the RSC Organic Stereochemistry Award (2011), Humboldt award (2012), the Nagoya gold medal (2013), ACS Cope Scholar Award 2015, Chemistry for the Future Solvay Prize (2015), the August-Wilhelm-von-Hoffman Medal (2016), the Tetrahedron Prize 2017, the Euchems gold medal and the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (jointly with J.-P. Sauavage and Sir J.F. Stoddart).
Feringa’s research interest includes stereochemistry, homogeneous catalysis, organic synthesis, asymmetric catalysis, molecular switches and motors, supramolecular chemistry, self-assembly, molecular nanosystems and photopharmacology. | |
| 25 | Name: | Sir Alan Roy Fersht | | | Institution: | University of Cambridge | | | Year Elected: | 2008 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1943 | | | | | | |
Alan Fersht is the Herchel Smith Professor of Organic Chemistry at Cambridge University and Director of the MRC Centre for Protein Engineering. He enjoys combining the methods of chemistry with those of molecular biology for studying complex problems in the interface of chemistry, biology and medicine. In particular, he works in the general area of the structure, activity, stability and folding of proteins, and the role of protein misfolding and instability in cancer and disease. He was the first to apply site-directed mutagenesis to analyze the structure and activity of proteins and the strength and specificity of protein interactions and is one of the founders of protein engineering. His current work is mainly in two specific areas. The first is in elucidating at atomic resolution how proteins fold and unfold, using advanced structural and biophysical methods on engineered proteins. His method of Phi-value analysis of mutated proteins is now the standard procedure for experimentally characterizing transition states for protein folding and unfolding and benchmarking simulation at atomic resolution. The second is using the same structural and biophysical methods to study how mutation affects proteins in the cell cycle, particularly the tumor suppressor p53, in order to design novel anti-cancer drugs that function by restoring the activity of mutated proteins. Alan Fersht is a fellow of the Royal Society, a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences, an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and a member of EMBO and Academia Europea. He has won several international awards, including the FEBS Anniversary Prize (1980); the NOVO Biotechnology Award (1986); the Charmian Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry (1986); the Gabor Medal of the Royal Society (1991); the Max Tishler Lecture and Prize, Harvard University (1992); the FEBS Data Lecture and Medal (1993); the Jubilee Lecture and Harden Medal of the Biochemical Society (1993); the Feldberg Foundation Prize (1996); the Distinguished Service Award for Protein Engineering, Miami Nature Biotechnology Winter Symposium (1997); the Davy Medal of the Royal Society (1998); the Chaire Bruylants (1999); the Natural Products Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry (1999); the Anfinsen (1999) and Stein and Moore (2001) Awards of the Protein Society; the Bader Award of the American Chemical Society; the Linderstrom-Lang Prize and Medal (2002); the Bijvoet Medal (2008); the G.N. Lewis Medal (2008), and the Copley Medal of the Royal Society (2020). He was knighted in 2003 for his work on protein science, and he has honorary degrees from Uppsala, Brussels, Weizmann Institute, Imperial College, The Hebrew University, and Arhus University. He is associate editor of PNAS, senior editor of PEDS, and co-chairman of the editorial board of ChemBioChem. Alan Fersht was elected an international member of the American Philosophical Society in 2008. | |
| 26 | 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. | |
| 27 | Name: | Dr. Marye Anne Fox | | | Institution: | University of California, San Diego | | | Year Elected: | 1996 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1947 | | | Death Date: | May 9, 2021 | | | | | | |
Dr. Marye Anne Fox, a nationally known chemist and academic leader, was named the seventh chancellor of the University of California, San Diego in April 2004 by the University of California Board of Regents. She stepped down from that position in July 2012 and continued at the university as Professor of Chemistry. Previously, Dr. Fox was chancellor and distinguished university professor of chemistry at North Carolina State University, a post she held since 1998. Before going to North Carolina State, Fox spent 22 years at the University of Texas, where she advanced from assistant professor of organic chemistry to vice president for research and held the Waggoner Regents Chair in chemistry. Dr. Fox has held over 50 endowed lectureships at universities around the world. She has also served as visiting professor at Harvard University, the University of Iowa, the University of Chicago, the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris and the Chemistry Research Promotion Center in Taipei. Dr. Fox earned a bachelor's degree in science from Notre Dame College, a master's degree in science from Cleveland State University and a Ph.D. from Dartmouth College. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and has served on its executive committee, and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Dr. Fox has received numerous awards, including the Charles Lathrop Parsons Award (2005) from the American Chemical Society in recognition of outstanding public service and the 2010 National Medal of Science. She has received a long list of research awards from professional societies in the U.S. and abroad. She also has been honored with numerous teaching awards, as well as the Monie Ferst Award, a national award recognizing outstanding mentoring of graduate students. More than 50 students have received advanced degrees under her supervision, and over 100 postdoctoral fellows and sabbatical visitors have worked with her. Dr. Fox also served on numerous boards, including the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), where she chaired the Subcommittee on Infrastructure for the 21st Century in 2003; the National Academy's Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable; the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (NASULGC); and a number of corporate boards. Dr. Fox, who was born in Canton, Ohio, is married to UCSD professor of chemistry James K. Whitesell. She has three sons and two stepsons. She died on May 9, 2021. | |
| 28 | Name: | Dr. Joseph S. Francisco | | | Institution: | University of Pennsylvania; Purdue University | | | Year Elected: | 2021 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1955 | | | | | | |
Joseph S. Francisco is the President's Distinguished Professor of Earth and Environmental Science and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his B.S. at the University of Texas at Austin, and he received his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Francisco was a Research Fellow at University of Cambridge in England, and a Visiting Associate in Planetary Science at California Institute of Technology. His research has focused on bringing new tools from experimental physical and theoretical chemistry to atmospheric chemical problems to enhance our understanding of chemistry in the atmosphere at the molecular level. This work has led to important discoveries of new chemistries occurring on the interfaces of cloud surfaces as well as fundamental new chemical bonding controlling these processes. He has been an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow. He was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt U.S. Senior Scientist Award; appointed a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Bologna, Italy; Professeur Invité at the Université de Paris-Est, France; a Visiting Professor at Uppsala Universitet, Sweden; an Honorary International Chair Professor at National Taipei University, Taiwan; and an Honorary Professor, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, China. He served as President of the American Chemical Society in 2010. Dr. Francisco currently serves as Executive and Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society and on the Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Joseph S. Francisco was elected, to the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, as well as, a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2021. | |
| 29 | Name: | Dr. Joseph S. Fruton | | | Institution: | Yale University | | | Year Elected: | 1967 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1912 | | | Death Date: | July 29, 2007 | | | | |
| 30 | Name: | Dr. Vitalii I. Gol'danskii | | | Institution: | Academy of Sciences of the USSR & NN Semenov Institute of Chemical Physics | | | Year Elected: | 1989 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1923 | | | Death Date: | January 14, 2001 | | | | |
| 31 | Name: | Dr. Harry B. Gray | | | Institution: | California Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 2000 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1935 | | | | | | |
Harry Gray's research career has touched nearly every aspect of inorganic chemistry. His earliest work dealt with mechanisms of ligand substitution reactions in coordination complexes, and the principles that he and his coworkers elucidated are now found in every standard inorganic textbook. Dr. Gray's research then moved from mechanism to electronic structure, where he was a pioneer in the study of spectroscopy and bonding in transition metal complexes. More recently, Dr. Gray has brought his profound understanding of inorganic chemistry to the elucidation of the behavior of metal centers in proteins. Arnold O. Beckman Professor of Chemistry since 1981, Dr. Gray was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1986, the Wolf Prize in 2004, the Othmer Gold Medal of the Chemical Heritage Foundation in 2013, the Feynman Teaching Prize in 2018, and the Cotton Medal in 2018 for his achievements. | |
| 32 | Name: | Dr. H. S. Gutowsky | | | Institution: | University of Illinois | | | Year Elected: | 1982 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1919 | | | Death Date: | January 13, 2000 | | | | |
| 33 | Name: | Dr. F. Otto Haas | | | Institution: | Rohm & Haas | | | Year Elected: | 1967 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1915 | | | Death Date: | 1/2/94 | | | | |
| 34 | Name: | Dr. Norman Hackerman | | | Institution: | Rice University & Robert A. Welch Foundation & University of Texas at Austin | | | Year Elected: | 1972 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1912 | | | Death Date: | June 16, 2007 | | | | |
| 35 | Name: | Dr. Sharon Hammes-Schiffer | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 2024 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1966 | | | | | | |
Sharon Hammes-Schiffer received her B.A. in Chemistry from Princeton University and her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Stanford University, followed by two years at AT&T Bell Laboratories. Her academic career has included faculty positions at the University of Notre Dame, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Yale University. She is currently a Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University. Her work encompasses the development of analytical theories and computational methods, as well as applications to experimentally relevant systems. She has devised theories of proton-coupled electron transfer and computational strategies for nuclear-electronic quantum dynamics and quantum chemistry, including the invention of the nuclear-electronic orbital (NEO) approach. She has used these approaches to investigate quantum mechanical effects in chemical, biological, and interfacial processes. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, American Chemical Society, and Biophysical Society. She has received the American Chemical Society Award in Theoretical Chemistry, the Royal Society Bourke Award, the Joseph O. Hirschfelder Prize in Theoretical Chemistry, and the Gibbs Medal Award. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Chemical Reviews and is on the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science and the Editorial Board for PNAS. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2024. | |
| 36 | Name: | Dr. Eric J. Heller | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 2013 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1946 | | | | |
| 37 | Name: | Dr. Dudley Robert Herschbach | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 1989 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1932 | | | | | | |
Dudley Herschbach was born in San Jose, California (1932) and received his B.S. degree in Mathematics (1954) and M.S. in Chemistry (1955) at Stanford University, followed by an A.M. degree in Physics (1956) and Ph.D. in Chemical Physics (1958) at Harvard University. After a term as Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard (1957-1959), he was a member of the chemistry faculty at the University of California, Berkeley (1959-1963) before returning to Harvard as Professor of Chemistry (1963), where he was Baird Professor of Science (1976-2003) and is now an Emeritus Professor. Since 2005 he has been a Professor of Physics (fall only) at Texas A&M University. He has served as Chairman of the Chemical Physics program (1964-1977) and the Chemistry Department (1977-1980), as a member of the Faculty Council (1980-1983), and Co-Master with his wife Georgene of Currier House (1981-1986). His teaching roster includes graduate courses in quantum mechanics, chemical kinetics, molecular spectroscopy, and collision theory, as well as undergraduate courses in physical chemistry and general chemistry for freshmen, his most challenging assignment. Currently he gives a freshman seminar course on Molecular Motors and an informal graduate "minicourse" on topics in chemical physics. He is engaged in several efforts to improve K-16 science education and public understanding of science. He serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees of Science Service, which publishes Science News and conducts the Intel ScienceTalent Search and the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Association for Women in Science, and the Royal Chemical Society of Great Britain. His awards include the Pure Chemistry Prize of the American Chemical Society (1965), the Linus Pauling Medal (1978), the Michael Polanyi Medal (1981), the Irving Langmuir Prize of the American Physical Society (1983), the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1986), jointly with Yuan T. Lee and John C. Polanyi, the National Medal of Science (1991), the Jaroslav Heyrovsky Medal (1992), the Sierra Nevada Distinguished Chemist Award (1993), the Kosolapoff Award of the ACS (1994), and the William Walker Prize (1994). He was named by Chemical & Engineering News among the 75 leading contributors to the chemical enterprise in the past 75 years (1998). Dr. Herschbach's current research is devoted to methods of orienting molecules for studies of collision stereodynamics, means of slowing and trapping molecules in order to examine chemistry at long deBroglie wavelengths, a dimensional scaling approach to strongly correlated many-particle interactions, and theoretical analysis of molecular motors, particularly enzyme-DNA systems. | |
| 38 | Name: | Dr. Roald Hoffmann | | | Institution: | Cornell University | | | Year Elected: | 1984 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1937 | | | | | | |
Roald Hoffmann was born in Zloczow, Poland in 1937. Having survived the Nazi occupation, he arrived in the U.S. in 1949 after several years of post-war wandering in Europe. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School and Columbia University and proceeded to take his Ph.D. in 1962 at Harvard University, working with W. N. Lipscomb and Martin Gouterman. Dr. Hoffmann stayed on at Harvard University from 1962-1965 as a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows. Since 1965, he has been at Cornell University, where he is now the Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters and Professor of Chemistry. 'Applied theoretical chemistry' is the way Roald Hoffmann characterizes the particular blend of computations stimulated by experiment and the construction of generalized models, of frameworks for understanding, that is his contribution to chemistry. In more than 450 scientific articles and two books he has taught the chemical community new and useful ways to look at the geometry and reactivity of molecules, from organic through inorganic to infinitely extended structures. Professor Hoffmann is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and has been elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society, the Indian National Science Academy and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, among others. He has received numerous honors, including over twenty five honorary degrees and is the only person ever to have received the American Chemical Society's awards in three different specific subfields of chemistry: the A. C. Cope Award in Organic Chemistry, the Award in Inorganic Chemistry, and the Pimentel Award in Chemical Education. In 2009, in addition to being elected to fellowship, he received the American Chemical Society's James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public as well as the Public Service Award from the National Science Board of the National Science Foundation. In 1981, he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Kenichi Fukui. | |
| 39 | Name: | Dr. John J. Hopfield | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 1988 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1933 | | | | | | |
John J. Hopfield has been a professor at Princeton University since 1997 and Howard A. Prior Professor of Molecular Biology since 2001. After receiving his Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University in 1957, he worked as a member of the Bell Laboratories technical staff (1958-60, 1973-89) and as a research physicist at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris (1960-61). He has served on the faculties of the University of California, Berkeley (1961-64), the California Institute of Technology (1980-97) and Princeton University (1964-80, 1997- ) and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. A scientist of considerable range, Dr. Hopfield started his career as a solid state physicist before moving into molecular biology and conducting path-breaking research in neurosciences. His areas of interest have included the electron-transfer processes important to photosynthesis; the mechanism of biological proofreading in the transcription and expression of DNA; and the relation between brain function and computers. He has received numerous honors for his work, including the APS Prize in Biophysics (1985), the Dirac Medal from the International Center for Theoretical Physics (2001), the Swartz Prize from the Society for Neuroscience (2012), and the Franklin Institute's Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics (2019). | |
| 40 | Name: | Dr. Donald F. Hornig | | | Institution: | Brown University & Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 1967 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1920 | | | Death Date: | January 21, 2013 | | | | | | |
A leader in theoretical and physical chemistry, Donald Hornig was born in 1920 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He received his doctoral degree from Harvard University in 1943 and went on to work at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the Los Alamos Laboratory where he conceived and developed a triggered spark-gap switch to initiate the explosive lenses used to set off the implosion in the first plutonium device. Later, Dr. Hornig held teaching positions at Brown University, becoming a full professor at the age of 31, before moving to Princeton University in 1957 as chairman of the Department of Chemistry. In 1964, he was named as the science advisor to President Lyndon Johnson, fulfilling that role until 1969. He had previously served as a science advisor to Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. After a brief term as vice president of Eastman Kodak Company, he returned to Brown as president of the university, serving in that capacity until 1976, when he became President Emeritus. Subsequently he became Professor of Chemistry in the School of Public Health at Harvard University, and from 1987-90, when he retired, he was chairman of the Department of Environmental Health in the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Hornig was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship and the Charles Lathrop Parsons Award of the American Chemical Society as well as a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Donald Hornig died January 21, 2013, at the age of 92, in Providence, Rhode Island. | |
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