150th Chemistry

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 teacher, have an...

Donald Sterling Noyce

March 26, 2020

Donald Sterling Noyce

By Yvette Subramanian

Donald S. Noyce, a professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and former associate dean of undergraduate affairs in the College of Chemistry, died at his home on Nov. 3 at the age of 81. He was a highly regarded teacher and an organic chemist who loved to discern the mechanisms of chemical...

In Memoriam: Alumna Vera Kistiakowsky

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

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 participation in the sciences. Kistiakowsky was an expert in experimental particle physics and observational astrophysics. She was the first woman appointed MIT professor of physics....

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....

Willard Frank Libby

January 1, 2020
George B. Kauffman | www.britannica.com

Willard Libby

By George B. Kauffman, Professor of Chemistry, California State University Fresno

Willard Frank Libby (1908 - 1980) American chemist whose technique of carbon-14 (or radiocarbon) dating provided an extremely valuable tool for archaeologists, anthropologists, and earth scientists. For this development he was honored with the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1960.

Libby, the son of farmer Ora Edward...

Glenn Theodore Seaborg

March 29, 2020

Glenn Theodore Seaborg

By Les Prix Nobel edited by Nobel Lectures

Glenn Theodore Seaborg was born in Ishpeming, Michigan, on April 19, 1912. At the age of 10 he moved with his family to California, in 1929 he graduated at David Starr Jordan High School in Los Angeles as...

William Francis Giauque

January 1, 2020
College of Chemistry News

Giauque, William Francis

By D. N. Lyon, K. S. Pitzer, and D. A. Shirley

The death of William Francis Giauque, 1949 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, on March 28, 1982, ended the career of...

In memoriam: Willard B. Rising

January 14, 2023
by John Maxwell Stillman, Bernard Moses, and Edmond O'Neill

Undated portrait Willard B. Rising. Collection Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.Willard B. Rising

Summary of Prof. Rising's career from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography

Willard Bradley Rising, chemist, b. 26 sept 1839, Meckleenburg, New York. D. 9 Feb 1910, Berkeley, CA. Lived at 2203 Bancroft, Berkeley, CA (now the edge of the University on Bancroft.) Wife Frances;...

In Memoriam: alumnus Herbert Alexander Young

November 3, 2022
Celeste T. Wright, Arthur Child, Bruce Glassburner, C. Bickford O'Brien, and Harold G. Reiber

Painting of Herbert Young, undated

Herbert Alexander Young (1906-1965) Professor of Chemistry and Dean, College of Letters and Science UC Davis. (1945, Tennessee Eastman Corporation newsletter photo. This version of the image is a mural at UC Davis.)

Herbert Young son of William Alexander and Aldie Jennings Young, was born October 10, 1906, in San Diego,...

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...