1980-1989

Charnice- 1981
 * [Kenichi Fukui] **



====Kenichi Fukui was born in Nara, Japan, on October 4, 1918. He actually didn’t consider chemistry one of his favorite subjects in high school. It was through his fathers friend that he got into chemistry. His father asked the advice of Professor Gen-itsu Kita of Kyoto Imperial University concerning the course he should take. Prof. Kita suggested that Ryokichi, one of his juniors from the same native province, should send him to the Department of Industrial Chemistry with which he was then affiliated. Fukui started originally as an experimentalist. He worked on experimental organic chemistry which were mostly published in Japanese papers, together with his papers on reaction engineering and catalytic engineering. But the nature of his main work in chemistry can be better represented by more than 280 English publications, of which roughly 200 concern the theory of chemical reactions and related subjects. Other English papers relate to statistical theory of gellation, organic synthesis by inorganic salts, and polymerization kinetics and catalysts. In 1988 he received the Imperial Honor of the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun. ====

====He received the A.B. (1941) and Ph.D. (1948) in Chemical Engineering at Kyoto University and served as Professor there on the Faculty of Engineering, Department of Hydrocarbon Chemistry (1951-1982). He then became President of the Kyoto Institute of Technology (1982-88) and later the Director of the Institute for Fundamental Chemistry in Kyoto, an institute built specifically for him. ====

====Fukui was the co-recipient (with Roald Hoffmann) of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "his frontier orbital theory of chemical reactivity". In 1954 Fukui published his theory that the site and rate of any reaction depends on the geometry and relative energies of the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) of one reactant and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) of the other. ====

====He applied this method to a very wide variety of reactions and reactants, including aromatic substitution in benzenoid and heteroaromatic systems, additions to conjugated alkenes and others. Fukui's calculations gained increasing recognition among non-theoreticians as a consequence of the more pictorial orbital symmetry representations of Woodward and Hoffmann. Fukui's monograph "Theory of Orientation and Stereoselection" summarizes his work in this field. ====


 * [Roald Hoffmann] **

Brandon- 1984

Born: July 15th 1921 Died: May 14th 2006 Type Of Sciece: Bio-Chemistry



Robert Bruce Merrifield came from quite turbulent beginnings. Born in Fort Worth, Texas Merrifield was only 2 years old when his family moved. Merrifield would go on through many grade schools before finally graduating from Montebello High. It was there where his interest for both Astrology and Chemistry were piqued. After some time at Pasadena Junior College Merrifield transferred to UCLA where he began his work on animals and the effects of synthetic Amino Acid diets. Upon graduating Merrifield joined a research firm and began to pioneer “Solid Phase Peptide Synthesis”. Which has now become the standard method for synthesizing peptides and proteins. Small beads that cannot be dissolved yet have holes and combined with units that “link” creating peptide chains.. The peptide will covalently stay attached Thus, the peptide is stuck in the “solid” phase! Merrifield received the Nobel Prize in 1984 for this achievement. He would go on to marry a research partner “Libby” and have six children. [] []

Lydia Hanson (: Nobel Prize of Chemistry- 1986

Professor Dudley R. Herschbach, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA Professor Yuan T. Lee, University of California, Berkley, USA and Professor John C. Polanyi, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

They, for their work, had been awarded this Prize for their contributions in the dynamics of chemical elementary processes. The dynamics of chemical reactions: This particular branch of physical chemistry tries to explain the time-dependent mind-blower, like an energy transfer and a chemical reaction. Under the terms of the defined motion of the nuclei and electrons which make-up the whole system. With this study, it is being tested to possibly prepare two reagents in specific quantum state and to determine its state distribution of the given off products. In this study it is very difficult to conduct. While the experiments have mostly been limited to preparing a single reagent to help in the determining of the product distribution, this approach gives us information concerning the very detailed aspects of the dynamics.

Professor Dudley R. Herschbach, was born in San Jose, California on June 18, 1932, the first of six children to Robert and Dorothy Herschbach. His first interest in science was brought around at age nine by an article on astronomy in //National Geographic.// Dudley entered Stanford University in 1950 and found a new world with vastly different intellectual horizons than he'd dreamed of. Although he gladly played freshman football, he ended up turning down an athletic scholarship in favor of an academic one. This allowed him to give up varsity football after spring practice. By this time he had come to find that the lab and library already was a much the more exciting place to be. His work was launched at the University of California at Berkeley, where he was appointed an Assistant Professor of Chemistry in 1959 and became an Associate Professor in 1961. This new field developed rapidly after I returned to Harvard in 1963 as Professor of Chemistry. They studied a wide range of alkali reactions and found multiple prototype modes of reaction dynamics which could be correlated with the electronic structure of the target molecule. Yet in particular, they were then able to study the same reactions elucidated by John Polanyi with his complementary method of infrared chemiluminescences. This much enhanced the interpretation of reaction dynamics in terms of electronic structure. Then in 1967 Yuan Lee joined the group as a postdoctoral guy. While chemistry brought together these brilliant minds, it likewise brought his wife, Georgene Botyos, to Harvard as an organic graduate student. They were married in 1964 and their daughters Lisa and Brenda were born just before she received her Ph.D. in 1968.

Professor Yuan T. Lee was born on November 19, 1936 in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Besides his interest in sports during this time, he was also an great and serious reader to a wide variety of books covering science, literature, and social science. The biography of Madame Curie made a rather large impact on him at a young age. It was Madame Curie's beautiful life as a wonderful human being, her dedication toward science, her selflessness, idealism that made him decide to be a scientist. He joined the University of California at Berkeley as a graduate student in 1962. Yuan received his Ph.D. degree in 1965. In February 1967, he joined Professor Dudley R. Herschbach and Professor John C. Polanyi at Harvard University as a post-doctoral guy. Lee and his first met wife, Bernice Wu, in elementary school. Through their marriage they have had two sons, Ted (born in 1963), Sidney (born in 1966) and a daughter, Charlotte (born in 1969).

Professor John C. Polanyi was born in 1929 in Berlin, Germany, of Hungarian parents, Michael and Magda Elizabeth Polanyi. The family moved to England in 1933 where he received his education. His University training was at Manchester University, where he obtained his B.Sc. in 1949, and his Ph.D. in 1952. From the years 1952 till1954, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Research Council Laboratories in Ottawa, Canada, and from 1954-1956 Research Associate at Princeton University. In 1958, he married Anne (Sue) Ferrar Davidson. They have two children, Margaret Alexandra (born 1961), and Michael Ferrar (born 1963). In the years to come John juggled his family duties as well as being a scientist/ professor. When 1967 rolled around John C. Polanyi, Yuan T. Lee, and Dudley R. Herschbach were an official team.

1987 (Kimberly Machuca) > >
 * Donald J. Cram**
 * Born: 22nd April 1919 in Chester, VT
 * Died: 17th June 2001 in Palm Desert, Ca
 * Early Life: Cram's life was just like any other normal kids. Cram was adventurous and always thought he could do any idea that came into his mind. Cram worked about the total of eighteen different jobs by the time he was sixteen. At sixteen, Cram left his family and traveled to Florida, but after his stay there he moved back to Massachusetts to work as a house painter and roofer. After his summer in Massachusetts, Cram payed for his tuition at Winwood in Long Island, NY as a factotum. While in his twelfth year of school, Cram took a course in chemistry, taught himself geometry, and earned a four year $6,000 National Rollins College Honors Scholarship. Attending Rollins College let Cram take more classes in chemistry and also participate in philosophy. Within his four years there Cram achieved his pilot's license, produced a minor radio station, and ate extremely good food. After Rollins College Cram stayed in New York awhile and worked at a Biscuit Company. While living in New York he learned about the bad side of life and after seeing circumstances happen again and again he heard the word "research." Research became his favorite word and chemical researching became his god. After Dr. Guy Waddington, his first college chemistry teacher, told Cram he could make a decent industrial investigator, but not an academic one he decided to do just that and prove this teacher wrong. Cram got his first teaching assistant ship at the University of Nebraska with Dr. Norman O. Cromwell. World War II started and Cram started working for Merck & Company. After the war, Cram attended Harvard University in an assistant ship with Professor L.F. Fieser. From Harvard Cram went to University of California at Los Angeles where he taught from 1985 to the 1990's.
 * Type of Science involved in: Organic Chemistry
 * Extra Awards Earned: Received three American Chemical Society Awards, the three titles were " Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry; the Arthur C. Cope Award for Distinguished Achievement in Organic Chemistry; and the Roger Adams Award in Organic Chemistry." Cram also received the William Gibbs and Tolman medals. In 1961, Cram was elected to the National Academy of Science and in 1974 became the California Scientist of the Year. Also in 1976, Cram became the Chemistry Lecturer and Medalist of the Royal Institute of Chemistry in the United Kingdom. A year later Cram was given an Honorary Doctors degree which came from Uppsala University in Sweden. In six years Cram received a similar award in Southern California.
 * http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1987/cram.html
 * Jean-Marie Lehn**
 * Jean-Marie Lehn**
 * Born: September 30, 1939 in Rosheim, France
 * Early Life: Lehn was the son of a baker who loved music and later became the organist of their small city. Lehn was the oldest of four boys growing up in World War II. Lehn started high school at the age of eleven and during high school took the normal classes of Latin, Greek, German and English languages along with philosophy his last year, which he liked very much. Lehn also became interested in chemistry and achieved the baccalaureate in Philosophy in 1957. First off Lehn studied the physical, chemical, and natural sciences, but grew extremely interested in organic chemistry. Lehn had always liked science, but organic chemistry to him seemed like a calling . Lehn bought compounds, glassware, and the rest of the materials he needed to start experimenting in organic chemistry in his parents house. It finally became clear when Lehn heard the lectures of Guy Ourisson that he wanted to do research in organic chemistry . After receiving his bachelors degree in science, Lehn went on to be a junior researcher for Guy Ourisson as a member of Centre National de la Recherde Scientifique as to obtain his Ph. D. degree. Lehn published his first scientific paper in 1961 on 'an additivity rule for substituent induced shifts of proton NMR signals in derivatives.' Afterwards, Lehn returned to Strasbourg to mix what he knew about organic chemistry with quantum theory and physical methods. Once Lehn opened his own laboratory the main experiments were on 'NMR studies of conformational rate processes, nitrogen inversions, quadrupolar relaxation, molecular motions and liquid structure.'
 * Type of Science involved in: Organic Chemistry
 * Experiment Facts: "for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity"
 * Charles J. Pendersen**
 * Born: October 3, 1904 in Pusan, Korea
 * Died: October 26, 1989 in Salem, NJ
 * Early Life: Pendersen was the youngest of three children, but only his older sister survived from childhood along with him. His father was a engineer from Norway and his mother was a daughter of a tradesman from Japan. In Korea they did not teach different languages during his childhood so Pendersen was sent to a convent school in Nagasaki. When Pendersen turned ten years old his mother took him to begin his studies at St. Josephs a Roman Catholic school run by priests and brothers called the Society of Mary. This is where Pendersen took his first course ever in chemistry. When it was time for Pendersen to attend college he choose one in America along with his fathers agreement. Pendersen choose the University of Dayton for simple reasons like it was near his extended family and it was run by the Society of Mary also. Pendersen received a bachelors degree in chemical engineering at University of Dayton and then went on to receive his masters degree in organic chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Pendersen first started off with trying to find a good metal de-activator and found it in petroleum products. Pendersen's studies ended with his study of crown ethers the last nineteen years of his career from 1970 to 1969 when he retired from Du Pont.
 * Type of Science involved in: Organic Chemistry
 * Experiment Facts: //"for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity"//.
 * http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1987/pedersen.html