American Philosophical Society
Member History

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Resident (12)
Subdivision
102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry[X]
1Name:  Dr. Paul D. Bartlett
 Institution:  Harvard University & Texas Christian University
 Year Elected:  1978
 Class:  1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
 Subdivision:  102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Deceased
 Birth Date:  1907
 Death Date:  10/11/97
   
2Name:  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
   
3Name:  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.
 
4Name:  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.
 
5Name:  Dr. James G. Anderson
 Institution:  Harvard University
 Year Elected:  1998
 Class:  1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
 Subdivision:  102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1944
   
 
James Anderson has pioneered the development and application of instruments to determine the chemical abundance of chemical radicals in the stratosphere. He established from measurement and theory the abundance of ClO in the stratosphere and then OH, NO, and BrO. This showed unambiguously that Cl from chloroflourocarbons was the cause of the ozone depletion in the Antarctic and that ClO and BrO from industrial sources was the cause of the ozone depletion. They are the basis for quantitatively testing models of the atmosphere. These results are from the very difficult and sophisticated measurements made by him with instrumented stratospheric ballon flights. Dr. Anderson has established a world center of research with brilliant young scientists who are participating in carrying their field forward. Having been Philip S. Weld Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry at Harvard Univeristy since 1978, Dr. Anderson has also served on the faculties of the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Michigan. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1992); the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1985); and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1986). He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado (1970).
 
6Name:  Dr. Jeremy R. Knowles
 Institution:  Harvard University
 Year Elected:  1988
 Class:  1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
 Subdivision:  102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Deceased
 Birth Date:  1935
 Death Date:  April 3, 2008
   
7Name:  Dr. Daniel G. Nocera
 Institution:  Harvard University
 Year Elected:  2021
 Class:  1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
 Subdivision:  102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1957
   
 
Daniel G. Nocera is the Patterson Rockwood Professor of Energy at Harvard University. He moved to Harvard in 2013 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy and was Director of the Solar Revolutions Project and Director of the MIT Solar Frontiers Center. Nocera is recognized for his discoveries in renewable energy, originating new paradigms that have defined the field of solar energy conversion and storage. Nocera created the field of proton coupled electron transfer (PCET) at a mechanistic level by making the first measurements that temporally resolved the movement of an electron coupled to a proton. On this experimental foundation, he provided the first theory of PCET. With PCET as a guiding framework, he invented the Artificial Leaf and the Bionic Leaf. The Artificial Leaf comprises Si coated with catalysts to capture the direct solar process of photosynthesis – the use of sunlight to split water to hydrogen and oxygen from neutral water, at atmospheric pressure and room temperature. The Bionic Leaf comprises a bio-engineered organism interfaced with the catalysts of the Artificial Leaf to capture the dark process of photosynthesis – the combination of carbon dioxide and hydrogen to produce biomass and liquid fuels. The integration of the light and dark processes of the Artificial Leaf and the Bionic Leaf, respectively, allowed Nocera to develop a complete artificial photosynthesis — sunlight + air + water to biomass and liquid fuels — that is ten times more efficient than natural photosynthesis. Extending this approach, Nocera has achieved a renewable and distributed Haber-Bosch synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen in air by coupling solar-based water splitting to a nitrogen and carbon fixing bioorganism to produce a living biofertilizer, resulting in increased crop yields and early harvests. These science discoveries set the stage for the large scale and distributed deployment of solar energy fuels and food production using only sunlight, air and any water source. With such simple natural inputs, such discovery is particularly useful to the poor, where large infrastructures for fuel and food production are not tenable. Complementing his interest in solar energy conversion, Nocera has designed layered antiferromagnets to explore exotic states arising from highly correlated spins, creating the spin 1/2 quantum spin liquid on a kagomé lattice, a long-sought prize in condensed matter physics. His group has also created nanocrystal sensors for the metabolic profiling of tumors, a technique used by clinicians to develop new cancer drug therapies. Afield from chemistry, Nocera invented the Molecular Tagging Velocimetry to make simultaneous, multipoint velocity measurements of highly three-dimensional turbulent flows. This fluid physics technique has been employed by the engineering community to solve long-standing and important problems that had previously escaped characterization. Nocera founded Sun Catalytix, a company committed to developing energy storage technologies for the wide-spread implementation of renewable energy; the coordination chemistry flow battery technology invented by Sun Catalytix is now being commercialized by Lockheed Martin. A second company founded by Nocera, Kula Bio, is focused on the development of renewable and distributed crop production and land restoration; the technology also provides a low-cost curve for significant carbon sequestration. Nocera has been awarded the Leigh Ann Conn Prize for Renewable Energy, Eni Prize, Burghausen Prize, and the United Nation’s Science and Technology Award for his discoveries in renewable energy. On this topic, he has also received the Inorganic Chemistry, Harrison Howe, Mack, Remsen and Kosolapoff Awards from the American Chemical Society. He has received honorary degrees from Harvard University, Michigan State University and the University of Crete. In addition to membership in the American Philosophical Society, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Indian Academy of Sciences.
 
8Name:  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.
 
9Name:  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
   
10Name:  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.
 
11Name:  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
   
12Name:  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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