150th 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
By Rollie J. Myers, Gerd M. Rosenblatt, and Herbert L. Strauss

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...

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....

Richard Edward Powell

March 11, 2020
By George Jura, R. E. Connick, A. E. Hutson, and G. A. Somorjai

Richard Edward Powell

Shortly after the death of Professor Richard Powell, his brother wrote a letter to the department, as follows: “Dick said that the two happiest days of his...

Rollie John Myers

March 11, 2020
By David E. Wemmer

Rollie Myers

Professor Rollie John Myers Jr. was born on July 15, 1924, in Hastings, Nebraska, where his father was also born, and passed away on September 12, 2016, at age 92. His family prospered in Nebraska, thanks to automobiles requiring parts and the development of radio. In 1932 his father...

Stanley G. Thompson- a Chemist's Chemist

February 14, 2022
by Glenn T. Seaborg

Thompson and associates.

The UCLA Gang, Chicago, July 1944. Left to right: Leonard Katzin, Zene Jasaitis, Nathalie and Harlan Baumbach, Glenn Seaborg, Stanley Thompson, Leonard Dreher, Fred Albaugh

In looking back at the discovery of transuranium elements the name Stanley G. Thompson stands out. When he died (July 16,...

http://www.bonestamp.com/sgt/A_Chemists_Chemist/Chemist_Chemist.htm

Robert George Bergman

March 20, 2020

Professor Bergman standing in front of a chalkboard.

Robert G. Bergman was born in Chicago, Illinois, on May 23, 1942. After completing his undergraduate studies in chemistry at Carleton College in 1963, he received his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in 1966 under the direction of Jerome A...

Charles Bonner Harris

March 20, 2020
By Jennifer Shanoski (Ph.D. '06, Chem)

Professor Harris in his office

Charles Bonner Harris was born in New York on April 24, 1940, the first child of Charles J. and Brenda Bonner Harris. Six months later, the family moved to Oak Park, Illinois, where his sister, Sally, was born. When Charles was 4 years old...

David Henry Templeton

March 19, 2020
by Alan Templeton and Diana Templeton

Professor Templeton in his office

David H. Templeton was born in Houston on March 2, 1920, the second of six children of David and Miriam Templeton, a Presbyterian minister and a homemaker, respectively. Both parents were college graduates, a relatively...