150th Chemistry

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 (...

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,...

George Claude Pimentel

March 3, 2020

George Claude Pimentel

By Robert E. Connick, Frederick C. Crews, C. Bradley Moore, Kenneth S. Pitzer, and Loy L. Sammet

With the death of George Pimentel (1922-...

Gilbert Newton Lewis

March 25, 2020

Gilbert N. Lewis

Gilbert N. Lewis in his lab at UC Berkeley, 1937.

By Raymond G. Gettell, Joel H. Hildebrand, Wendell M. Latimer, and G. E. Gibson

“Gilbert Newton Lewis was born near Boston, October 23...

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...

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...

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...