150th Celebration

In Memoriam: Harold S. Johnston

July 19, 2021

Two scientists in a lab

Harold Johnston circa 1970s. (Photo: Dennis Galloway collection, Bancroft Library)

Pioneering atmospheric chemist and UC Berkeley Emeritus Professor of Chemistry Harold S. Johnston, was born in Woodstock, Georgia, on October 11, 1920, and died on Oct 20, 2012. He received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, with a minor in English literature, from Emory University...

Peter Armentrout

March 26, 2020

Peter Armentrout

Professor Armentrout (at the College of Chemistry from 1981 to 1986 before moving to University of Utah) was born in Dayton, Ohio on March 13, 1953. He received a B.S. degree with highest honors in 1975 from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. While at Case, Prof. Armentrout conducted research with Prof. Rob Dunbar on photodissociation...

Henry Chalmers Biddle

March 3, 2020
Henry C. Biddle was appointed to the chemistry department at Berkeley in 1901. He did research in biochemistry and taught organic chemistry.

Walter Charles Blasdale

March 25, 2020

Group of people posing in front of a building

Chemistry faculty and staff stand in front of Gilman Hall, 1917. Walter Blasdale is in the front row, second from right.

By W. F. Giauque, J. H. Hildebrand, V. F. Lenzen

...

William Crowell Bray

March 30, 2020
William Crowell Bray

By G. E. K. Branch, A. R. Davis, and J. H. Hildebrand

William Crowell Bray, Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, died February 24, 1946, after he had apparently been recuperating from an illness of several months.

A...

Leo Brewer

March 4, 2020

Professor Brewer standing next to chalkboard

Leo Brewer died on February 22, 2005 after several years of declining health. He was a chemist’s chemist always ready to help out fellow chemists, physicists, and materials scientists with his vast chemical knowledge. He is considered to be the founder of modern high-temperature chemistry.

Brewer was born June 13, 1919 in St...

Meet our faculty: John Prausnitz

October 20, 2020

John Prausnitz has for sixty-five years been a major intellectual figure in Berkeley chemical engineering, and indeed in chemical engineering worldwide. He is the originator and still the principal academic shepherd of the field of molecular thermodynamics, wherein fundamental properties of molecules and functional groups within molecules are used to predict macroscopic phase equilibria, which underlie the selection and design of large-scale separation processes such as distillation, extraction, and adsorption. He has expanded that work over the years to ever more complex systems,...

Ignacio Tinoco Jr.

March 25, 2020

Ignacio Jr. Tinoco

By Kerry Grens

Ignacio (Nacho) Tinoco, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, who pioneered methods to understand the structures of RNA, died last month (November 15). He was 85....

Theodore Vermeulen

March 5, 2020

Theodore Vermeulen

Undated photo of Professor Theodore Vermeulen in his office in Gillman Hall. (Photo College of Chemistry, UC Berkeley)

Professor Theodore (Ted) Vermeulen (1916-1983), Professor of Chemical Engineering and Director of the Water Thermal & Chemical Technology Center, passed away on October 28, 1983 after a brief but valiant fight against leukemia. His...

Celebrating George Pimentel on his 100th birthday

April 9, 2022

Kenneth Herr and George Pimentel

Image: (l to r) Kenneth Herr and George Pimentel discuss production of the infrared spectrometer that was placed on the Mars Mariner 6 and 7 spacecraft that went to Mars in 1969 and discovered that there was water on the planet. (Photo: College of Chemistry)...