150th Celebration

John Maxson Stillman

July 25, 2021
F. O. Koenig | Isis

Excerpt from biography by F.O. Koenig in Isis, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Autumn, 1942), pp. 142-146

John Maxsom Stillman

Photo of Stillman from Stanford University archivev collection. Approx date 1897....

In Memoriam: Norman Edgar Phillips

July 20, 2021
by C. Judson King

Norman E. PhillipsNorman's photo for the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation award, 1963.

Norman Phillips, Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, (1928-2019) was born December 20, 1928 in Detroit, Michigan. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry from the University of British Columbia in 1949 and 1950, followed by the Ph.D., also...

Alum Kaoru "Kay" Inouye's internment and military story

July 13, 2021
Kaoru Inouye | discovernikki.org

Kaoru Inouye teaches chemistry at Heart Mountain, World War II

Scene in the Chemistry class at the Heart Mountain High School, as Kaoru Inouye, instructor, is showing student Sumi Tam[...] a step in one of the Chemistry experiments. Photographer: Iwasaki, Hikaru; Heart Mountain, Wyoming. War Relocation Authority...

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...

Melvin Calvin

March 28, 2020

Melvin Calvin

By Les Prix Nobel edited by Nobel Lectures

Melvin Calvin was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, April 8, 1911, of Russian emigrant parents. He received the B.S. degree in Chemistry in 1931 at the...

Plutonium: The scary element that helps probe space's secrets

June 28, 2021
By Justin Rowlatt | BBC News

Atomic bomb being dropped on Nagasaki, WWII

Plutonium may be the most feared and fearsome substance in the entire periodic table. Photo: via BBC News

This story first appeared in the BBC News Magazine September 20, 2014.

It's best known as the main ingredient of atomic bombs like the infamous Fat Man, dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945,...

Ernest Lawrence's cyclotron:
 Invention for the ages

May 26, 2021
By Lynn Yarris |Berkeley Lab

Ernest O. Lawrence, Glenn T. Seaborg, and J. Robert Oppenheimer in early 1946

Ernest O. Lawrence, Glenn T. Seaborg, and J. Robert Oppenheimer in early 1946 at the controls to the magnet of the 184-inch cyclotron, which was being converted from its wartime use to its original purpose as a cyclotron. (archive...

Harold Urey was not a fan of the atomic bomb he helped develop

August 6, 2020
by Kim Briggeman | missoulian.com

Harold Urey, 1940s

Urey at his desk, photograph, circa late 1940s (Northwest Indiana Times)

Missoula first noticed Harold Urey in May of 1915, when the University of Montana announced the winners of the annual C.A. Duniway Scholarship Books.
Urey, a 22-year-old freshman from Indiana by way of a mining camp in the Gallatin Mountains, received the biology award....

In Memoriam - Mitchel Ming-Chi Shen

May 5, 2020
Alexis T. Bell, C. K. King, and D. S. Soong

Mitchel Shen (1938-1979) Professor of Chemical Engineering

Mitchel Shen, undated photograph

Following a brief illness, Mitchel Shen passed away on August 7, 1979, at the early age of forty and at the peak of his career. The students and faculty at Berkeley will miss an inspirational teacher and dedicated colleague, and the field of polymer science has lost...

David Chandler, pillar of physical chemistry, dies at the age of 72

April 26, 2017
Courtesy of the Chandler family

Prof. Philip Geissler and the late Prof. David ChandlerDavid Chandler, pillar of the physical chemistry scientific community and Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, died April 18, 2017 at the age of 72 at his home in Berkeley, CA after a valiant twenty-year battle with prostate cancer.