150th Celebration

Meet our faculty: John Prausnitz

October 20, 2020
C. Judson King | College of Chemistry

John Prausnitz photographed at home 2019

image: John Prausnitz photographed at home in 2011.

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,...

Alan Stuart Foss

March 11, 2020

Alan S. Foss

Professor of Chemical Engineering

By C. Judson King, Simon L. Goren, and P. Henrik Wallman

With the death of Alan S. Foss on February 22, 2006, the University of California, Berkeley Department of Chemical Engineering lost...

In Memoriam: Alumna Vera Kistiakowsky

October 27, 2022
UC Berkeley, College of Chemistry Press Release

Vera Kistiakowsky undated photoUndated photo of alumna Vera Kistiakowsky

Vera Kistiakowsky (9 September 1928 – 11 December 2021) was an American research physicist, teacher, and arms control activist. She was professor emerita at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the physics department and Laboratory for Nuclear Science, and was an activist for women's...

Celebrating 25 years of groundbreaking research at Tan Kah Kee Hall

October 11, 2022
A message from Chancellor Christ

Tan Hall in 2022

It is my pleasure to share this report celebrating the 25th anniversary of Tan Kah Kee Hall at UC Berkeley and honoring the community of alumni and friends whose partnership helped make this extraordinary structure a reality. Dedicated in 1997, Tan Kah Kee Hall is the most recently constructed facility within the seven-building complex that houses Berkeley’s...

UC Berkeley Chemists and the Periodic Table

January 9, 2019
by Marge d'Wylde | College of Chemistry

The 1969 Discovery 104 Team Dimitri Mendeleev, a Russian chemist who in 1869 wrote out the known elements (of which there were 63 at the time) on cards and then arranged them in columns and rows according to their chemical and physical properties is considered the father of the Periodic Table. In celebration of the 150th anniversary of this pivotal moment in science, the UN has proclaimed 2019 the International year of the Periodic Table. Seen here is the element 104 discovery team in 1969.

David Lyon, UC chemistry professor, dies at 89

August 20, 2022
Steve Rubenstein | Chronicle Staff Writer | SF GATE

Dorothy Lyons, David Lyons, Clayton Heathcock

Professors David Lyon and Clayton Heathcock with David's wife Dorothy in an undated photograph at a College of Chemistry event. (photograph Michael Barnes)

Professor David Lyon died Dec. 10, 2008 in a Santa Rosa senior citizen home at the age of 89.

David Lyon, a...

In Memoriam: Robert Curl (1933-2022)

July 6, 2022
UC Berkeley, College of Chemistry Press Release

Robert Curl, 2009

Robert Curl in 2009 at the Science History Institute, Philadelphia. Photo Science History Institute/Douglas Lockard

The College of Chemistry is sad to announce that internationally acclaimed scientist and nanotechnology pioneer Robert Curl who was a Berkeley alum (Ph.D. 1958, Chemistry with Kenneth Pitzer); Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1996,...

William L. Jolly

February 11, 2014

William Jolly with Retorts to Lasers

William Lee Jolly (1927-2014), emeritus professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley, (Ph.D. '52, Chem with Latimer) whose work helped facilitate the renaissance of inorganic chemistry in the United States during the middle of the 20th century, died of heart failure on January 10, 2014, at Kaiser Medical Center in Richmond, CA. He was 86....

Earl Leonard Muetterties

March 20, 2020

Earl Muetterties

By K. N. Raymond, R. A. Andersen, R. G. Bergman, and A. M. Stacy

Earl Muetterties died of cancer on January 12, 1984, at the age of 56. Although he had been at Berkeley for only six years, his contributions to the Berkeley Chemistry Department were important and lasting. His lifetime contributions to the science of chemistry, first as a research worker and later as a...

Berkeley Chemistry: 1868 to the Present

Original Chemistry Building 1897 between mining and the library

First dedicated chemistry building (in the middle) between the first mining building on the left and the library on the right; c. 1897 photo by William Letts Oliver, or his son. courtesy Bancroft Library.

Chemistry has been part of Berkeley...