1990-1999

Laurel- 1990

The 1990 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Elias James Corey "for his development of the theory and methodology of organic synthesis" Corey was born on July 1928 in Methuen, Massachusetts to Christian Lebanese immigrants. His father passed when Corey was just eighteen months which, left his widowed mother with struggling in the great depression along with his three siblings and an aunt and uncle living in an spacious house. As a youngster, Corey was independent, preferring sports like football, baseball and hiking rather than working. However, his aunt, who was much stricter than his mother, assigned a household chore which, had to be taken seriously. From his aunt taught him "to be efficient and to take pleasure in a job well done, no matter how mundane". From the ages of five to twelve, Corey attended the Saint Laurence O'Toole elementary school in Lawrence, and graduated from Lawrence Public High School at the age of sixteen. From there he entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At M.I.T., Corey took mathematics, physics and chemistry, which he enjoyed. He later converted to chemistry before even taking an engineering course because of the "excellence and enthusiasm" of his teachers, and the joy of solving problems in the laboratory. After graduating from M.I.T., after three years and, he continued there as a graduate member on synthetic penicillins. By 1950 and, at the age of twenty-two, Corey joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an Instructor in Chemistry. In 1959, he moved to Harvard University, where he is still an emeritus professor of organic chemistry with an active Corey Group research program. He is interested in organic chemistry because of //"its intrinsic beauty and its great relevance to human health"//.  At Harvard, Corey's research group grew in size and quality and soon evolved to include the following areas: synthesis of complex bioacttive molecules; the logic of chemical synthesis; new methods of synthesis; molecular catalysts and robots; theoretical organic chemistry and reaction mechanisms; organometallic chemistry; prostaglandins and other eicosanonids and their relevance to medicine; application of computers to organic chemical problems, especially to retrosynthetic analysis.

Awards 1988-National Medal of Science. 2004- American Chemical Society’s greatest honor, the Priestley Medal in 2004.

He has developed several new synthetic reagents: PCC (pyridinium chlorochromate), and PDC (pyriduium dichromate), which is widely used for the oxidation of alcohol to aldehydes. Butyldimethylsilyl (TBDMS), Triisopropylsilyl (TIPS), and Methoxyethoxymethyl (MEM): popular alcohol protecting groups and reduction of ketones. In addition, Corey commenced detailed studies on cationic polyolefin cyclizations utilized in enzymatic production of cholesterol from simpler plant terpene. Several reactions developed in Corey's lab have become commonplace in modern synthetic organic chemistry. At least 302 methods have been developed in his lab.

Dillon- 1992

Alex- 1993

Tyler- 1994 The 1994 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to George A. Olah //"for his contribution to carbocation chemistry"//. George Andrew Olah was born May 22, 1927 in Budapest, as Oláh György. His research involves the generation and reactivity of carbocations via superacids. Carbocation is an ion with a positivly-charged carbon atom. The charged carbon atom is a sextet, meaning its valence shell as 6 electrons rather than 8. Therefore carbocations are often reactive, seeking to fill the octet of valence electrons as well as regain a neutral charge. Olah studied and taught at Budapest University of Technology and Economics. During the 1956 Hungarian Revolution Olah and his family moved to England and then Canada. In Canada Olah joined Dow Chemical in Sarnia, Ontario. Where he worked alongside another Hungarian Chemist Stephen J. Kuhn. Olah’s work on carbocation started during his 8 years with Dow. In 1965 he returned to academia at Case Western Reserve University and then to University of Southern California in 1977. In 1971, Olah became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Olah is currently a professor at the University of Southern California and the director of the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute. Olah has also received the Priestley Medal, the highest honor granted by the American Chemical Society.


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 * George A. Olah ||
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[|http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1994/olah.html] [|http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/426702/George-A-Olah] [|http://www.chemguide.co.uk/mechanisms/eladd/carbonium.html] [|http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1994/illpres/indexolah.gif]

Collin- 1995 The 1995 Chemistry Noble Prize was awarded to Paul J. Crutzen, F. Sherwood Rowland, and Mario Molina "for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of the ozone."

Paul J. Crutzen was born on December 3, 1933 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. A very difficult childhood, Crutzen began elementary school along with the commencement of the Second World War. The “Winter Famine” of 1944-45 was a terrible time when food, water, and heat were in short supply, leaving some of Crutzen’s classmates dead. With the help of one teacher, Crutzen was able to complete his elementary school education along with only a few other students. When the war was over, Crutzen entered the Hogere Burgerschool, or Higher Citizen School, in 1946. Here, he studied three languages: French, German, and English, and played many different sports. Chemistry was one of Crutzen’s least favorite subjects, with math and physics being his favorite. He completed his education here in 1951 with natural sciences as his major focus, but did not receive high enough grades for university level, so entered the “Middle Technical School” instead to train as a civil engineer. Until 1958, Crutzen had worked at the Bridge Construction Bureau of the City of Amsterdam, and married Terttu Soininen, a woman whose support helped him devote so much time to science. That same year, Crutzen applied for a computer programming hob at Stockholm University, which he was surprisingly accepted without any prior experience in the field. From this period until 1966, Crutzen worked with two of the greatest meteorologists, Prof. Gustav Rossby and Dr. Bert Bolin, in many projects in this field. In 1965, he was able to help an American scientist make a numerical model of the oxygen allotrope distribution in the stratosphere, mesosphere and lower thermosphere. This project got him very interested in photochemistry of the ozone layer in the atmosphere, which then he commenced his most ambitious study.

F. Sherwood (Sherry) Rowland was born on June 28, 1927 in Delaware, OH. He spent all of his elementary and high school education through the excellent Delaware public school systems. He entered the first grade at age 5, high school at age 12, and graduated a few weeks before he turned 16. When he graduated high school in 1943, most of the males in his class were drafted in to the military, but since he was underage and could not enroll, he entered Wesleyan University playing baseball, basketball, and writing for the sports pages for the University paper. In 1945, close to his 18th birthday, Rowland enlisted in a Navy program to train radar operators. After 14 months, he went back to Ohio to slowly finish his undergraduate education. Under his parents’ influence, he applied to the Department of Chemistry at the University of Chicago in 1948. At Chicago, Rowland received the noble prize winning mentor, Willard F. Libby, and happily joined his research group as a radio chemist working on the chemistry of radioactive atoms. Throughout his graduate years, he played competitive baseball and basketball, and married the love of his life, Joan Lundberg. He completed his Ph. D. thesis in 1952 and went to Princeton University for his new position in the Chemistry Department. From then on, he traveled the country and the world studying and investigating topics in chemistry, especially the state on the environment. In 1973, Rowland came up with the question, what would eventually happen to the chlorofluorocarbon compounds in the atmosphere? Later that year, Mario Molina joined his research group, and they both discovered that this was not just a science question, but potentially a dangerous environment problem including the depletion of the ozone layer.

Mario Molina was born on March 19, 1943 in Mexico City, Mexico. As a child, he was extremely interested in science, using his house bathroom as a chemistry laboratory. Most of his friends and school colleagues did not share the same enthusiasm in science as he did. At age 11, Molina was sent to a boarding school in Switzerland but was disappointed in finding that these students showed as much interest in science as his Mexican friends did. In 1960, knowing his career path in research chemistry, Molina enrolled in the chemical engineering program at UNAM. Finishing his undergraduate studies here, he took the next step in attaining his Ph.D. in physical chemistry, which he soon realized was very difficult because of his weak background in math and physics. Molina studied in Germany for 2 years before returning to Mexico to start the first graduate chemical engineering program at UNAM. Finally in 1968, he went off to the University of California at Berkeley for his graduate studies in physical chemistry. At Berkeley, Molina was able to work alongside Prof. George Pimentel, who was a loving mentor and extraordinary teacher to him. He received his Ph.D. in 1972, and in the fall of 1973, joined a group with Prof. F. Sherry Rowland in researching “hot atom” chemistry. Prof. Sherry and Molina soon made the “CFC-ozone depletion theory.” This theory included the research for processes that might destroy CFCs in the lower atmosphere and what the consequences were. They knew that chlorine atoms produced from the decomposition of the CFCs would catalytically destroy the ozone. Paul Crutzen had discovered the role of these catalysts a few years prior. So the continuous release of these CFCs would cause the depletion of the ozone. They published their findings in the paper Nature, which was posted in 1974. They shared their discovery with the scientific community and media so that society could take precautions to fix the problem. Molina spent the years after that teaching at the University of California at Irvine and performing other important experiments, but he still finds this noble prize represents the recognition of him and his colleagues for their excellent work in the atmospheric chemistry community on the stratospheric ozone depletion issue. [|http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1995/]
 * [[image:http://images.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1995/crutzen_postcard.jpg height="235" caption="Paul J. Crutzen"]] ||
 * Paul J. Crutzen ||


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 * F. Sherwood Rowland ||


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 * Mario Molina ||

Anastasia- 1998

Walter Kohn's biography

Walter Kohn was born in Vienna in 1923 to a middle class Jewish family. Both of his parents were members of the Austro –Hungarian empire, but moved to the capital of Vienna with their parents. Walter Kohn’s father owned a business producing high quality postcards. This business flourished from 1900 to 1920, but due to the death of Kohn’s paternal uncle Adolf and the collapse of the Austrian economy Kohn’s father’s business began to decline in the later portion of the 1920s and in the 1930s. Before Hitler came to power in 1933 Kohn’s family possessed an elegant beach house on the coast of Herringdorf at the Baltic Sea, a token from more prosperous times. Here Kohn spent his summers with his mother and his sister. Even his father would come to visit when he could afford to leave the business. Kohn credits these summers as being the happiest memories of his childhood and family. Kohn’s maternal grandparents and his mother, who had graduated from an academically oriented high school and had a good knowledge of German, Latin, Polish, French, Greek, Hebrew, and English, helped Kohn’s family maintain contact with their traditional Judaism. The family also was absorbed in Vienna’s intellectual and artistic community. After completing a public elementary school Kohn was enrolled in the Akademische Gymnasium for five years. Here he received a spectacular education that focused on Greek and Latin, which Kohn strongly preferred to the mathematics that he received a C for in High school, for five years before Hitler Germany annexed Austria creating Annuclus. Kohn was expected to take over the family business though he was not enthusiastic about this future. This entire world was changed by Annuclus. Kohn’s father’s business was confiscated though he was required to continue its management without pay. Kohn was expelled from school and his sister imagrated to England. Kohn found refuge in a Jewish school, Chajes Gymnasium, that he was enrolled in. Here he fell under the instruction of the two professors, Dr. Emil Nohel and Dr. Victor Sabbath, who helped him to find his love for mathematics and science. These two professors would later be killed by Mazi barbarianism. Kohn was soon forced to leave Austria even thought his parents also thanks the two families who took him in after he was separated from his parents during WWII. Both of the families that stayed with in America and Canada also lost their live during WWII but despite his harsh and traumatic childhood Kohn managed to leave his make on chemistry forever.



Walter Kohn's work with density functional theory ==== Walter Kohn was awarded the Noble prize for his development of the density functional theory. Two publications, the first being with Pierre Honenberg and the second with Lu J. Sham, reported on Kohn’s ear;y work on the density functional theory. It was said that after Kohn’s electronic wave function was produced chemistry had come to an end; in other words chemistries future seemed far too complex for man to be capable of delving farther into it’s twisted chains of molecules and complex chemical reactions. With help from his nobel prize co winner’s study Kohn defied the general pessimistic view of chemistry’s future potential by rearranging the wave equation of systems. Kohn’s goal was to be able to develop a density functional theory using the electron density distribution as opposed to electron wave lengths. Kohn views the density functional equation as having two contributions to the science of molecular quantum equations, these include problems evolving the electrons structure of molecules and of condensed matter. ==== ==== The first contribution that has been made by the DFT is in the understanding of molecular quantum equations. Chemists and physicists have made spectacular advances in this field by following the Schroedinger equation, yet this equation is not applicable in the event that high accuracy is required. DFT provides a new perspective here by focussing principally on the electron density of the groundstate in real 3 dimensional coordinate space. Other subjects of interest in this area are the correlation of hole density and linear response functions. ==== ==== DFT’s second contribution is practical. When traditional multi-particle wave functions are applied to systems of many particles the exponential number of atoms exceeds a critical value. Without DFT even major computing advances would lead to only a minor increase in the critical value thus continuing to exclude problems with various interacting atoms such as drugs and DNA. DFT can however handle a much lager increase in the critical value. DTF calculated the binding sites and activation energy of the reaction of a methanol molecule in a cage of zeolite sodalite. Also in the geometric structure of the cathrate Sr ₈Ga₁₆Ge₃₀ and it’s charge density in a plane bisecting the centers of the cages DFT calculated that the thermal conductivity is lowered by Sr atoms that scatter phonons effectively because theory are weekly bound. ==== ==== Density functional theory has recently made developments in spin polarized systems, degenerate groundstates, multicomponent systems, free energy at finite temperatures, superconductors and electronic pairing mechanisms, state equi ensembles, relativistic electrons, current density and functional theory of diamagnetism, time dependent phenomenon, Bosons, Combination DFT with molecular dynamics, Monte Carlo methods, and finally the combination of LDA and Hubbard on site repulsion. ==== ==== Today density functional theory can be applied in thousands of methods. One example of these applications is the spin susceptibility of an alkali metal. DFT can calculate spin density within 1% error, a fact that even astonishes Kohn himself. Calculation accuracy for large classes has been substantially improved to nearly an order of magnitude by gradient corrections and hybrid schemes. Unfortunately for physical reactions the improvement has not been so substantial and for geometric patterns it remains at 1%. ====

====<span style="font-size: 1.06em; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;"> Now widely accepted by chemists and physicists density functional theory is often referred to as the standard model. DFT is used in chemistry in wave based methods when many atoms are involved. Even in areas where DFT still works poorly it can be used to understand how analyzation of that structure needs to be modified. As DFT is modified it will hopefully give us more accurate results in a wider range of situations. ====

John Pople's biography

John A. Pople was born on the 31st of October, 1925 on the Burman seaside in the united kingdom. Pople was the first in his family to study science and attend a university. Pople’s father owned a successful clothing shop that had been passed to him from his great grandfather. Through the depression the business managed to fare well. His mother had a farming background. Because of this Pople and his brother spent much of there childhood on farms.

Pople and his brother were not expected to run their family business but were encouraged to receive an education. Unfortunately for his family though they could pay the fees Pople and his brother were not allowed in any local schools because of their families class. Desperate for their children to have the most promising future possible Pople’s parents sent him and his brother to bristol grammar school thirty miles away. Pople was one of the thirty students accepted each year and boarded there returning home by train each weekend. Pople disliked the arrangement and persuaded his parents to allow him to commute home everyday.

At age twelve Pople discovered a strong interest in mathematics. He was so thirsty for knowledge that once he found a discarded calculus book in a wastebasket and read it cover to cover. He once started on a research project where he attempted to the number of possible batting orders for the players on a cricket team. For a short amount of time he thought this to be an original work, though he soon discovered n!. He then attempted to extend n! unsuccessfully. Though the project seemed nothing more than the product of a naive child’s ambition it is an excellent example of the determination that would lead Pople to become one of the 1998 prize laureates.

Afraid of being excessively intelligent Pople kept this work secret and intentionally missed questions on many of his math tests. His true intellect was kept secret until one of his professors gave out a particularly challenging exam. Pople, unable to avoid the temptation, received a perfect score submitting multiple answers to many of the problems. Astounded by the score Pople’s parents and professors began to look into getting him a scholarship to Cambridge.

Pople was one of the few students who was allowed to attend a university before taking part in the war, however he did not finish his studies in time to take part in the war and thus was temporarily removed from Cambridge to make way for incoming soldiers. Pople was given a job with the Bristol Airplane co. where he would spend the next four years before his return to Cambridge.

As his interest in pure mathematics began to wayne Pople decided to redirect his future career to mathematics in science. Returning to Cambridge Pople noted the general excitement that had become part of the university due to the students and professors returning from war during the four years he was gone.

Here he met chemistry professor Frank Boys and began the research that would eventually become the building blocks for his research for which he would receive a nobel prize.

Keefe- 1999 <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">The winner of the 1999 nobel prize in chemistry for his studies of the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy. He was born February 26th 1946 in Damanhur Egypt. He atented California Institute of Technology. The reason he became interested in science is first for his intrest in math which Is what helped him to develop an intrest in chemistry. he triend to conduct expeiements in his home to but he realized his real passion for science when he went went to the campus in Maharem Bek with his uncle his passion showed in his grades for the first four years of college after getting his batchelor and masters in science. He was offered a full scholar ship to university of Pennsylvania. He said I had the feeling of being thrown into an ocean. The ocean was full of knowledge, culture, and opportunities, and the choice was clear: I could either learn to swim or sink. When he completed the reasherch for his Ph.D. and the requirements for a degree was completed by 1973. But his real Achevement was his nobel prize in chemistry which was given to him for for his studies of the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy.