Subdivision
| • | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | [X] |
| | 81 | Name: | Dr. JoAnne Stubbe | | | Institution: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1946 | | | | | | |
JoAnne Stubbe is one of the world's leading enzymologists. Her specific interest is in how reactive chemical intermediates such as free radicals are exploited and controlled in biochemical processes to effect difficult chemical transformations. With experiments of sparkling originality, she showed that a key enzyme, ribonucleotide reductase, that is involved in the synthesis of deoxynucleotides, initiates its chemistry through an unusual diferrictyrosyl radical that abstracts a key hydrogen from the sugar nucleus. Surprisingly, an important chemotherapeutic agent, bleomycin, was shown by Dr. Stubbe to owe its antitumor activity to a free radical mechanism that neatly explains its chemical and sequence specificity. Currently Novartis Professor of Chemistry and Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Stubbe has previously held faculty positions at Williams College (1972-77), Yale University Medical School (1977-80) and the University of Wisconsin (1980-87). She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1971). The recipient of honors including the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry (1986), the Alfred Bader Award in Bioorganic & Bioinorganic Chemistry (1997), the National Medal of Science (2009), and the Franklin Institute's Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science (2009). Dr. Stubbe was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1991 and the National Academy of Sciences in 1992. | |
| 82 | Name: | Dr. Henry Taube | | | Institution: | Stanford University | | | Year Elected: | 1981 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1915 | | | Death Date: | November 16, 2005 | | | | |
| 83 | Name: | Sir John Meurig Thomas | | | Institution: | The Royal Institution of Great Britain & University of Cambridge | | | Year Elected: | 1993 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1932 | | | Death Date: | November 13, 2020 | | | | | | |
Professor Sir John Meurig Thomas was born in December 1932 in South Wales. The son of a coalminer, Sir John's interest in science was greatly aroused as a teenager when his physics mistress talked about the life and work of Michael Faraday, who has remained one of his scientific heroes. He graduated with a Bachelor's degree from the University of Wales, Swansea, and completed his Ph.D. at the University of London. His first academic appointment (1958) was at the University of Wales, Bangor, where inter alia he demonstrated the profound influence that dislocations and other structural imperfections exert upon the chemical, electronic and surface properties of solids. He became Professor and Head of Chemistry at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth in 1969, where he broadened his interests in solid-state, surface and materials chemistry and pioneered the application of electron microscopy in chemistry. In 1978 he became Head of the Department of Physical Chemistry, University of Cambridge, where his development of new techniques in solid-state and materials science and his design and synthesis of new catalysts progressed greatly. From 1986-91 he was Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London, where he occupied the chair that was created for Michael Faraday. He was also Director of the Davy Faraday Research Laboratory. At Cambridge he extended his earlier electron microscopic and surface studies of mineral and intercalates to encompass the synthesis and structural determination of zeolitic materials by a combination of solid-state NMR, neutron scattering and real-space imaging. At London he added synchrotron radiaton to his armoury and devised techniques which combine X-ray spectroscopy and high-resolution X-ray diffraction to determine the atomic structure of active sites of solid catalysts under operating conditions. He has also designed new microporous and mesoporous catalysts, onto the inner surfaces of which active centres (for isomerizations, epoxidation, chiral hygrogenations and chiral amination) were grafted from organo-metallic precursors. He has also devised molecular sieve catalysts that convert n-alkanes to n-alkanol, cyclohexane or cyclohexene to adipic acid, n-hexane to adipic acid and cyclohexanone to its oxime and caprolactam, all in air under solvent-free conditions. One of his inventions, the single-step, solvent-free catalytic synthesis of ethyl acetate, is the basis of a 220,000 ton p.a. plant in the U.K., the largest of its kind in the world. One of his most significant recent catalytic innovations is the boosting of the enamtioselectivity of asymmetric organometallic catalysts by constraining them within mesoporous supports. This has been multiply patented (2003) by German industry as a means of producing enantiomerically enriched hydroxycarboxylic esters. He is the author of over 950 research papers and twenty patents, of two definitive university texts on heterogeneous catalysis (1967 and 1997), and of Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place (1991; Japanese translation, 1994; Italian translation, 2006), and co-editor of many other monographs. His awards include the Davy Medal and the Bakerian and Rutherford Lectureships of the Royal Society, the Faraday Medal, Longstaff Medal and four others of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Messel Gold Medal of the Society of Chemical Industry, the Semenov Centenary Medal and the Kapitza Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Science, the Willard Gibbs Gold Medal of the American Chemical Society, the Royal Medal (Queen's Medal), and the first recipient of the Award for Creative Research in Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Catalysis, also of the American Chemical Society. In 1995 the European Federation of Catalyst Societies (EFCATS), representing 24 national societies, chose him to give the first series of François Gault Lectures at 12 centers in 6 European countries. An FRS since 1977, in 1999 he was elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering for work that "has profoundly added to the science-base of heterogeneous catalysis leading to the commercial exploitation of zeolites through engineering processes". He was a Foreign Member or Hon. Foreign Fellow of fifteen other national and international academies and holds numerous honorary doctorates from Australian, British, Canadian, Chinese, Dutch, Egyptian, French, Italian, Spanish and U.S. universities. In 2000 The Electron Microscopy and Microanalysis Society of America held a symposium in his honour at their annual convention in Philadelphia, In September 2002 an International Symposium of Catalysis was held in London by the Royal Society of Chemistry to celebrate his 70th birthday. Stanford University awarded him the Linus Pauling gold medal in 2003 for his contributions to the advancement of science, and the Italian Chemical Society presented him with its Guilio Natta Gold Medal for meritorious work in catalysis. In 2007 the International Precious Metal Institute awarded him its Distinguished Achievement Award for "pioneering contributions to the field of heterogeneous catalysis using precious metals over a long, distinguished career." In 2010, he was awarded three lectureships: the Bragg Prize lecturship of the British Crystallographic Association, the Sven Beggren Prize lectureship of the Royal Lund Physiographic Academy, and the Ertl Prize lectureship of the Max Planck Gessellschaft. One of the world's most highly cited chemists, Sir John was founding co-editor-in-chief of Catalysis Letters (1987), Topics in Catalysis (1992), and Current Opinion in Solid-State and Materials Science (1996). He has done much to popularize science amoung young people and adult lay audiences, giving numerous lecture-demonstrations, radio, television, and national Portrait Gallery talks: his Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on crystals were broadcast on BBC national TV in 1987. He served (1982-85) as a science advisor in the U.K. Government Cabinet Office Committee, as Chairman of CHEMRAWN (chemical research applied to world needs), and Trustee of the Science Museum and of the Natural History Museum, London. In 1991 he was knighted for his services to chemistry and the popularization of science. In recognition of his contributions to geochemistry, a new mineral, meurigite, was name after him in 1995. John Meurig Thomas was Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the Davy Faraday Research Laboratory, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London, and Honorary Professor at the Department of Materials Science, University of Cambridge. From 1993-2002 he was Master of Peterhouse, the oldest college in the University of Cambridge. He is Vice President of the Cambridge University Musical Society. Sir John died on November 13, 2020, at age 87. | |
| 84 | Name: | Lord Todd | | | Institution: | University of Cambridge | | | Year Elected: | 1965 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1907 | | | Death Date: | 1/10/97 | | | | |
| 85 | Name: | Dr. Christopher Walsh | | | Institution: | Harvard Medical School | | | Year Elected: | 2003 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1944 | | | Death Date: | January 10, 2023 | | | | | | |
Christopher Walsh is a great enzymologist, a worldwide leader in studies of the mechanisms of enzymatic catalysis, with an emphasis on enzymes that are the targets of antibiotics. The Hamilton Kuhn Professor at Harvard University Medical School, he is also the author of major monographs in his field, including the classic "Enzymatic Reaction Mechanisms". Dr. Walsh's exceptionally wide-ranging oeuvre includes the dissection of enzymes that mediate the synthesis of antibiotics; the resistance to antibiotics; cell wall biosynthesis; detoxification of mercury-containing compounds; methanogenesis; and other processes. His work has also encompassed the design of mechanism-based inhibitors of medically important enzymes, the enzymatic synthesis of natural products such as antibiotic rifamycin and antitumor agent epothilone, and the understanding of the molecular basis of resistance to vancomycin, the antibiotic of last resort. In 2014 he was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry from the Franklin Institute. | |
| 86 | Name: | Dr. Stephen Weiner | | | Institution: | Weizmann Institute of Science | | | Year Elected: | 2022 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1948 | | | | | | |
Stephen Weiner was born in Pretoria, South Africa. He obtained a BSc degree in chemistry and geology at the University of Cape Town, an MSc in marine geochemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a PhD at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, USA in 1977 working in the field of mineral formation in biology (biomineralization). In the same year he joined the faculty of the Weizmann Institute of Science. He is now a professor emeritus at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
Steve Weiner carries out research in two fields: biomineralization and archaeological science. His biomineralization research focusses on basic mechanisms of mineral formation in biology, on the functions of organic crystals in manipulating light in biology, as well as on structure – function relations in vertebrate mineralized tissues such as bones and teeth. His archaeological research focuses on addressing key questions in archaeology by studying both the visual macroscopic record, as well as revealing the microscopic record with the help of instrumentation. Much of this research is carried out on-site during the excavation. In 1989 he published a book entitled “On Biomineralization” with the late Prof H.A. Lowenstam, and in 2010 he published another book entitled “Microarchaeology: Beyond the Visible Archaeological Record”.
Prof Weiner has published over 350 peer reviewed papers and has a Google H index of 125. He is the recipient of the 2010 prize for excellence of the Israel Chemical Society, the 2011 Aminoff Prize for Crystallography from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and he received the 2013 Pomerance Award for Scientific Contributions to Archaeology from the Archaeological Institute of America. In 2022 he will receive the gold medal of the Israel Chemistry Society; its highest award. | |
| 87 | Name: | Dr. Frank H. Westheimer | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 1976 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1912 | | | Death Date: | April 14, 2007 | | | | |
| 88 | Name: | Dr. George M. Whitesides | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 1997 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1939 | | | | | | |
George M. Whitesides is Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor at Harvard University. Educated at Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology, he was a member of the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1963-82. He returned to Harvard in 1982, serving as chairman of the Department of Chemistry from 1986-89 and Mallinckrodt Professor of Chemistry from 1982-2004. Dr. Whitesides is unique among chemists in the breadth and quality of both his scientific research and his involvement with government and industry. He has a remarkable record of highly influential academic research in core areas of chemistry and also in areas connecting chemistry to materials science and biology. One aim of his research is to establish intellectual connections between areas often considered essentially unrelated; the other is to make new connections between first-rate basic science and important technologies. Dr. Whitesides' current research is at the borders of chemistry, biology and materials science and includes both fundamental and applied components in molecular virology, rational drug design, glycobiology, interfacial chemistry, crystal engineering, fuel cells and nano and microfabrication technology. Yet, for all of the above, he is also a professor with a deep interest and participation in teaching, not just in his research specialties but in general science for Harvard undergraduates. In addition to numerous advisory positions and professional memberships, Dr. Whitesides is the recipient of the Kyoto Prize (2003), the Dan David Award (2004), the Priestley Medal (2006) and the Welch Award (2007). George Whitesides was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1997. | |
| 89 | Name: | Dr. Benjamin Widom | | | Institution: | Cornell University | | | Year Elected: | 1993 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1927 | | | | | | |
Chemist Benjamin Widom is known for his theoretical contributions to the thermodynamics and statistical mechanics of liquids (including complex liquids such as microemulsions and polymer solutions), of phase transitions and critical phenomena, and of interfaces. Currently Goldwin Smith Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at Cornell University, he received his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1953, after which time he joined the university faculty as an instructor in chemistry. He became a full professor in 1963 and chaired the chemistry department from 1978-81. Dr. Widom was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1974 and of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1979. In 1998 he was awarded the prestigious Boltzmann Medal "for his illuminating studies of the statistical mechanics of fluids and fluid mixtures and their interfacial properties, especially his clear and general formulation of scaling hypotheses for the equation of state and surface tensions of fluids near critical points." | |
| 90 | Name: | Dr. Theodor Wieland | | | Institution: | Max Planck Institute for Medical Research | | | Year Elected: | 1979 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1913 | | | Death Date: | 11/24/95 | | | | |
| 91 | Name: | Dr. Edgar Bright Wilson | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 1946 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1908 | | | Death Date: | 7/12/92 | | | | |
| 92 | Name: | Dr. Peter Guy Wolynes | | | Institution: | Rice University | | | Year Elected: | 2006 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1953 | | | | | | |
Peter G. Wolynes was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1953. He completed his undergraduate studies at Indiana University, receiving an A.B. degree in 1971. He then took up the study of statistical mechanics at Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D. in chemical physics in 1976. After a brief postdoctoral study with John Deutch at MIT, Dr. Wolynes returned to Harvard as an assistant professor in 1976. During the next four years at Harvard, Dr. Wolynes worked on the dynamical theory of electrolyte solutions, as well as on the then-nascent theoretical study of molecular dynamics of proteins. His early work on the theory of chemical reaction rates in condensed phases paved the way for the explosion of theoretical developments in this area throughout the 1980s. In 1980 Dr. Wolynes moved to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he progressed to be the Eiszner Professor of Chemistry and a Center for Advanced Study Professor of Chemistry, Physics and Biophysics. During the years he spent at Illinois, Dr. Wolynes worked on a wide range of theoretical problems in chemical physics, including the theory of the glass transition and the development of new techniques for studying quantum dynamics in condensed phases. He developed, in 1981, the quantum mechanical version of Kramers' celebrated 1940 theory of chemical reaction rates in solution. In addition, Dr. Wolynes provided a new picture of how energy flows quantum mechanically in moderate-sized molecules. Dr. Wolynes' interest in applying statistical mechanics to biology grew while he was at Illinois. He introduced energy landscape ideas to the field of protein folding, providing a statistical mechanical framework to understand how a one-dimensional sequence of amino acids folds to its native structure on a biologically relevant time-scale. These ideas have led to what has been termed the "New View" of protein folding kinetics. Energy landscapes have also proved useful in developing algorithms to predict protein structure from sequence. Dr. Wolynes' scientific contributions have been acknowledged in many ways. He received the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry in 1986, the Fresenius Award in 1988, the Peter Debye Award for Physical Chemistry in 2000 and the Biological Physics Prize of the American Physical Society in 2004. Among other external appointments, he was the Hinshelwood lecturer at Oxford in 1997 and Fogarty Scholar-in-Residence at the National Institutes of Health starting in 1994. He was elected in 1991 to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and in 2003 was elected a Fellow of the Biophysical Society. In 2000 Dr. Wolynes moved to University of California, San Diego, where he held the Francis Crick Chair in the Physical Sciences. In addition to continuing his work on many body chemical physics and protein folding he is now studying stochastic aspects of cell biology. In 2011, Dr. Wolynes moved to Rice University in Texas where he is the D.R. Bullard-Welch Foundation Professor of Science. | |
| 93 | Name: | Dr. Richard N. Zare | | | Institution: | Stanford University | | | Year Elected: | 1991 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1939 | | | | | | |
The Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science at Stanford University, Richard N. Zare is renowned for his research in the area of laser chemistry, resulting in a greater understanding of chemical reactions at the molecular level. By experimental and theoretical studies he has made seminal contributions to our knowledge of molecular collision processes and contributed very significantly to solving a variety of problems in chemical analysis. His development of laser induced fluorescence as a method for studying reaction dynamics has been widely adopted in other laboratories. Dr. Zare has received numerous honors and awards for his research and his teaching, including the National Medal of Science (1983), the American Chemical Society's Harrison Howe Award (1985) and Willard Gibbs Medal (1990) and the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2005). He has given named lectures at numerous universities, authored and co-authored over 700 publications and more than 50 patents and published four books, including a popular textbook on the topic of angular momentum in quantum systems. A graduate of Harvard University (Ph.D., 1964), where he studied with Dudley Herschbach, Dr. Zare has previously served on the faculties of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Colorado and Columbia University. A former chairman of the National Science Board, he was elected to the membership of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1976. | |
| 94 | Name: | Dr. Ahmed H. Zewail | | | Institution: | California Institute of Technology & NSF Laboratory for Molecular Sciences | | | Year Elected: | 1998 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1946 | | | Death Date: | August 2, 2016 | | | | | | |
Ahmed Zewail was the 1999 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry. He was the Linus Pauling Chair Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics and the Director of the Physical Biology Center at the California Institute of Technology until his death on August 2, 2016, at the age of 70. Dr. Zewail was educated in Egypt and received his B.S. and M.S. from Alexandria University and his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests were directed towards the development of new methodology for understanding the dynamical behavior of life molecules in space and time. Dr. Zewail was the recipient of honors and awards from around the world, including Egyptian postage stamps issued to honor his contributions to science and humanity. He held some 30 honorary degrees in science, medicine, philosophy, law, arts and humane letters. A member of numerous international academies, Ahmed Zewail was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1998. | |
| 95 | Name: | Dr. Xiaowei Zhuang | | | Institution: | Harvard University; Howard Hughes Medical Institute | | | Year Elected: | 2019 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1970 | | | | | | |
Xiaowei Zhuang is the David B. Arnold Professor of Science at Harvard University and an investigator of Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Her laboratory has developed single-molecule, super-resolution and genomic-scale imaging methods, including STORM and MERFISH, and has used these methods to discover novel molecular structures in cells and cell organizations in tissues.
Zhuang received her BS in physics from the University of Science and Technology of China, her PhD in physics in the lab of Prof. Y. R. Shen at University of California, Berkeley, and her postdoctoral training in biophysics in the lab of Prof. Steven Chu at Stanford University. She joined the faculty of Harvard University in 2001 and became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator in 2005.
Zhuang is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the European Molecular Biology Organization, a fellow of the American Association of the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society. She received honorary doctorate degrees from the Stockholm University in Sweden and the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. She has received a number of awards, including the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, National Academy of Sciences Award in Scientific Discovery, Dr. H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics, National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology, Raymond and Beverly Sackler International Prize in Biophysics, Max Delbruck Prize in Biological Physics, American Chemical Society Pure Chemistry Award, MacArthur Fellowship, etc. | |
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