150th Chemistry

William Garfield Dauben

March 3, 2020
By Paul A. Bartlett, Rollie Myers, and Andrew Streitwieser

Professor Dauben seated in his office, holding papers.

William Dauben died in his sleep during the night of January 1, 1997. His death was sudden and unexpected. He was born on November 6, 1919, the youngest of three sons of Hyp J. and...

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...

Paul Allan Barlett

March 26, 2020

Smiling man at a work desk with computerEmeritus Professor Paul A. BARTLETT grew up in New England, did his schooling in the Boston area, and graduated with an A.B. (Phi Beta Kappa) and an A.M. in Chemistry from Harvard University in 1969. As an undergraduate, he did research with...

Henry Frederick Schaefer, III

March 27, 2020
By T. Daniel Crawford

Henry Frederick Schaefer III

Henry Frederick ‘Fritz’ Schaefer III was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan on 8 June 1944, one of three children of Henry F. Schaefer, Jr and Janice Christine Trost. Fritz's parents were both graduates of the University of Michigan — his mother a...

Gilbert Newton Lewis

March 25, 2020
by Raymond G. Gettell, Joel H. Hildebrand, Wendell M. Latimer, and G. E. Gibson
Scientist in a laboratory

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

“Gilbert Newton Lewis was born near Boston, October 23, 1875. At the age of nine he was taken by his parents to live in Lincoln, Nebraska, where...

Neil Bartlett

March 20, 2020

Neil Bartlett

By Michael Barnes

Neil Bartlett, a renowned emeritus professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, whose groundbreaking experiments challenged the prevailing views of the nature of noble gases, died unexpectedly on...

Samuel Ruben

January 24, 2020
By Wendell M. Latimer, Melvin Calvin, and Dennis R. Hoagland

Scientist in a lab

Samuel Ruben in his lab. Photo from the Seaborg Archive, Lawrence Berkeley Lab. Undated photo, early 1940s.

Samuel Ruben was born in San Francisco, November 8, 1913. He was awarded the B.S. degree in 1935 and the Ph.D. degree in 1938 by the University of California. His death, September 28, 1943, resulted from an accident in the laboratory while he was working as Official...

Bruce H. Mahan, 1930 - 1982

February 18, 2021
Yuan T. Lee, Rollie J. Myers, Kenneth Sauer, and Ignacio Tinoco Jr.

Bruce Mahan posing on a tree log

Bruce Mahan was born in New Britain, Connecticut, in 1930. He attended Harvard University both as an undergraduate and as a graduate Ph.D. student. After completing his bachelor's degree in the chemistry department, he decided to carry out his doctoral studies with George Kistiakowsky in physical chemistry...