150th Chemistry

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;...

Berkeley Chemistry: 1868 to the Present

Berkeley 150th Anniversary 1868-2018; Original Chemistry Building 1897 between mining and the library

Photo: Berkeley 150 1868-2018 logo over photo of the 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...

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...