AWARDS
ACS 1992 Award Winners Following are vignettes of the fourth set of recipients of awards administered by ACS. The winners will receive their awards during the spring 1992 203rd ACS national meeting in San Francisco, with the exception of the Cope Medalist and the Cope Scholars. They will receive their awards at the fall 1992 204th ACS national meeting in Washington, D.C., during the Cope Symposium. The awards in San Francisco will be presented at a banquet on Tuesday, April 7, 1992. Vignettes of the remaining awardees will appear in a November issue of C&EN.
ACS Award in Separations Science & Technology sponsored by Rohm & Haas Co. MILOS V. NOVOTNY has been a pivotal figure in the development of analytical separations methods for more than 25 years. Novotny, who is James H. Rudy Professor of Chemistry at Indiana University, is especially known for conceptualizing and developing three widely used analytic techniques: capillary gas chromatography (GC), microcolumn liquid chromatography (LC), and capillary supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC). Novotny's early publications and innovative developments have laid much of the foundation upon which the wide acceptance of capillary GC as an analytic tool has been built. He has contributed significantly to the development of glass capillary columns, solving the difficult problems related to the deposition of thin films inside such columns. Furthering this work, he developed several alternative surface treatment procedures that have produced highly efficient GC columns. Always on the lookout for additional practical applications for capillary GC, Novotny has been instrumental in developing hardware that augments capillary GC. He was an 28
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early advocate of computer-based evaluations of complex chromatograms. Novotny's search for applications for capillary GC has even reached to space—the 1975 Viking Lander contained a miniature GC column he designed for the analysis of the soil on Mars. Novotny's highly acclaimed efforts in microcolumn separations techniques of LC, SFC, and capillary electrophoresis represent important innovations in modern analytical chemistry. As a result of his research group's current investigations, the utility of microcolumn separation methods in certain biochemical and industrial analytical problems has been demonstrated. Born in C z e c h o s l o v a k i a , t h e awardee attended the University of Brno where he received the equivalent of a B.S. degree in chemistry and physics (1962) and a Ph.D. in biochemistry (1965). In 1991, he received an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University in Sweden. Among his other honors, Novotny has received the 1986 ACS Award in C h r o m a t o g r a p h y a n d t h e 1988 Award in Chemical Instrumentation from the ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry.
Ernest Guenther Award in the Chemistry of Essential Oils & Related Products sponsored by Givaudan-Roure LEO A. PAQUETTE, Ohio State University Distinguished Professor, is being honored for his contributions in organic chemistry, particularly in terpenoid natural product total synthesis and development of methodology to aid in the synthesis of such compounds. He is one of the foremost practitioners of the art of organic synthesis. Paquette has completed syntheses of isocomene, gymnomitrol, modhephene, multifidene, A (9,12) -capnellene, pentalenolactone E, pental-
enene, silphinene, precapnelladiene, siphiperfolene, dactylol, africanol, (-)-punctatin A, doladiol acetate, 14epiupial, (H-)-punctatin D, (-)-retigeranic acid A, sterpuric acid, laurenene, and gorgiacerone, among others. Best known for his studies related to the synthesis and chemistry of dodecahedrane and its derivatives, Paquette has also made contributions to unnatural product synthesis. In addition, he has long been recognized for his achievements in physical organic chemistry, where he has been broadly concerned with mechanistic studies of dynamic ground- and excited-state processes to probe aspects of electronic perturbation. The award winner received a B.S. degree magna cum laude from Holy Cross College in 1956 and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1959. After serving as a research associate for Upjohn Co. from 1959 to 1963, he joined the faculty of Ohio State as an assistant professor, and was made a professor in 1969. He has held a Kimberly Professorship in Chemistry since 1981. Paquette has served as a member of many editorial boards and is the current editor-in-chief of Organic Reactions. He was an adviser on the National Science Foundation's chemistry division advisory committee (1981-84) and chairman of the ACS Columbus Section (1984), among other professional associations. ACS previously honored Paquette with the Edward W. Morley Award of the Cleveland Section in 1971, the Columbus Section Award in 1979, the ACS Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry in 1984, and an Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award in 1987. In 1989 he was named a Senior Humboldt Fellow by the Humboldt Foundation of the former West Germany. He is the author of more than 800 research papers in organic chemistry and has more than 40 patents to his credit.
Irving Langmuir Award in Chemical Physics sponsored by General Electric Foundation JOHN ROSS, Camille & H e n r y Dreyfus Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University, is described by a colleague as an extraordinary scientist, consistently in the forefront. He has taught more than 180 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and is a major contributor in both experimental and theoretical chemistry. Through his leadership in the rapidly growing area of nonlinear kinetic instabilities, he has distinguished himself in chemical physics. He discovered multiple stationary states in light-induced nonlinear systems and showed the existence of chemical hysteresis in such systems. In addition, he has created an "ingenious unique" method of stabilizing unsteady states without affecting their measures. Ross has been dominant in the research of chemical waves, including performing the first experiments involving the quantitative study of the properties of such waves showing the constancy of profile, amplitude, and velocity. With Peter Ortoleza, University of Indiana, he developed theories that predict a variety of chemical waves and showed experimentally the existence of phase diffusion waves. His research has increased the understanding of period precipitation phenomena such as Liesegang rings, which require initial concentration gradients, and structure formation in the absence of any such initial gradients. He has predicted and confirmed
Novotny
the possibility of "alternating current chemistry"—in particular, the thermodynamic efficiency of oscillatory chemical reactions and biological pumps. Ross, with Katherine C. Hunt and Paul Hunt, Michigan State University, is developing the thermodynamic and stochastic theory of chemical reactions far from equilibrium. Experiments from Ross' laboratory on relative stability in systems with multiple stationary states are providing confirming evidence. Ross received a B.S. degree from Queens College, N.Y., in 1948 and a Ph.D. degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1951. He is the author of over 275 papers and c o a u t h o r of the text " P h y s i c a l Chemistry," which is lauded by reviewers and users as a very special text that brings modern physical chemistry to the teaching classroom in an exceptional way.
ACS Award in Petroleum Chemistry sponsored by Amoco Foundation In 1989-90 alone, WOLFGANG M. H. SACHTLER, Vladimir N. Ipatieff Professor of Catalysis at Northwestern University, published 32 papers in zeolite chemistry and catalysis; by February 1991, nine more were either published or accepted for publication. Much of Sachtler's work addresses the chemistry of palladium clusters and palladium carbonyl clusters in zeolite cages. Of special significance are carbonyl clusters of the type Pd 13 (CO) x . They are formed when CO is admitted to NaY that contains
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small Pd y clusters with y = 1, 4, or 6. These are thought to be stabilized by interaction of Pd y with zeolite protons. Adsorption of CO displaces the protons from the palladium; the carbonyl clusters become mobile and coalesce to larger entities. In NaY this process stops when the palladium core of the quasi-spherical cluster has reached the critical size of Pd 13 , because this core is unable to pass through the cage windows of 0.75 nm. In zeolite 5A, with 0.5-nm-wide windows, the CO-induced coalescence stops at the stage of Pd 6 . The award winner has provided strong evidence supporting the proposal that palladium cluster-proton adducts are electron-deficient and responsible for the unusually high activity of reduced Pd/NaY in hydrocarbon conversion processes. His work suggests that some of the protons, which are formed during the reduction of Pd 2 + ions to Pd°, remain attached to the palladium clusters and make them "electron-deficient/' These metal-proton adducts act catalytically as "collapsed bifunctional sites/' That is, a catalytic reaction that ordinarily would require shuttling of reaction intermediates between metal sites and acid sites can take place during one residence of the adsorbed molecule on this hybrid site. For example, he has shown that the rate of ring enlargement of methylcyclopentane is substantially higher over a zeolite catalyst containing palladiumproton adducts than over a physical mixture of two zeolite catalysts, one containing only palladium atoms, the other containing acidic protons. Sachtler was educated in Germany, where he received a doctoral degree at Technische Hochschule, Braunschweig, in 1952. He spent 30 years
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Awards
Henry H. Storch Award in Fuel Chemistry sponsored by Exxon Research & Engineering Co.
Seebach
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in t h e N e t h e r l a n d s a n d joined Northwestern University in 1983. His honors include the Robert L. Burwell Jr. Award in Catalysis (1985), the ACS E. V. Murphree Award in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry (1987), and François Gault lectureship award (1990). He was a visiting professor in Japan in 1974 and an invited scientist of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1986.
ACS Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry sponsored by Aldrich Chemical Co. Many have noted DIETER SEEBACH's interest in the most practical laboratory details as well as in the latest theoretical insights on structure-reactivity effects. Further, colleagues conclude that the "hallmark of his work is its practicality and ready reproducibility," and that he has made "unique and lasting contributions to the truly useful category of new synthetic methodology." These compliments to Seebach, professor of organic chemistry at Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule in Zurich, are based on accomplishments amassed over 20 years of research. These range from developing new reagents and new types of reactants to designing new synthetic methods. This native of Karlsruhe, Germany, forged his skills in organic synthesis early. Following his undergraduate degree in chemistry in 1961 and Ph.D. in 1964 (with mechanistic-synthetic organic chemist Rudolf Crigee) from the University of Karlsruhe, Seebach worked as a 30
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postdoctoral fellow with the noted synthetic organic chemist Elias J. Corey at Harvard University. Concurrent with his work with Corey, Seebach began developing new reagents and new syntheses for organic compounds. He pioneered the field of reactivity "umpolung" of various functional groups (reversal of polarity at one or more reaction centers) and contributed to the evolving methodology of stereoselective and enantioselective syntheses. For example, he developed new stereoselective carbon-carbon bond forming reactions of β-alkoxy enolates, nitronate ions, and dianions. His use of organotitanium reagents for highly selective transformations has recent ly culminated in a catalytic enantio selective nucleophilic addition. Seebach's use of chiral Ν,Ν-acetals to synthesize enantiomerically pure compounds by chirality transfer opened a new avenue for practical synthesis. In addition, his use of x-ray crystallography to decipher stereoselective p h e n o m e n a was ground breaking. This effort led to an understanding of the 3-D struc tures of organolithium enolates and of their aggregation in solution. Seebach is also noted for his inter est in safety and has developed re agents for use in lieu of highly toxic ones. Another measure of the practi cality of Seebach's work is seen in its ready conversion to industrial-scale operations. A prolific author (more than 450 publications) and lecturer, Seebach has also secured about 20 patents on synthetic methodology. In 1987, he received the first Fluka Prize for re agent of the year and the German Chemical Society's Karl Ziegler Prize.
STEPHEN E. STEIN has shown how fundamental principles of pre dictive thermochemistry and kinet ics and model compound studies can be used to understand complex coal reactions. In particular, his pioneer ing research has provided a general framework on which to view coal conversion chemistry and to build mechanistic models. In one set of theoretical studies, Stein, a research chemist in the chemical kinetics division of the Na tional Institute of Standards & Tech nology (NIST), applied the Hûckel molecular orbital theory to homologous series of benzenoid polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). This work showed that reactivity depends almost solely on the chemical structures near the reaction site, leading to "an impressive simplification/' as one colleague puts it, of the problem of reactions of complex mixtures of PAHs. In turn, it enables the examination of possible chemical mechanisms for coal gasification. In other such studies, Stein organized the types of reactions and classes of free radicals of probable importance in thermal coal chemistry. In experimental work, Stein and his coworkers measured rate constants needed for predicting the behavior of reacting systems of aromatic and polycylic aromatic molecules. Rate constants for radical disproportionation, for instance, were measured for the first time for hydroaromatic radicals and an unexpected dependence on radical structure was found. More recently, Stein determined the dissociation rates of a large number of substituted anisoles and the effects of various substituents on bond strengths. The result of his theoretical and experimental work has been a much better u n d e r s t a n d i n g of carbon growth and Η-transfer reactions. And it has provided a scientific basis for the idea of active sites as well as a method for estimating energies of reactions at the edges of large PAHs. Stein received a B.S. degree in chemistry from the University of
Sciences in 1984 and is a fellow of the American Physical Society. He was awarded the ACS Joel Henry Hildebrand Award in the Theoretical & Experimental Chemistry of Liquids in 1986, and the 1989 Langmuir Award from the American Physical Society.
ACS Award in Colloid or Surface Chemistry Whitten
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Rochester in 1969, and a Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1974. He did postdoctoral work and was a research chemist at Stanford Research Institute from 1974 to 1976, and it was during this period that he began his research in coal chemistry. He joined the faculty at West Virginia University in 1976 and moved to NIST in 1982. Stein has more than 50 publications to his credit. He served on the editoral board of the International Journal of Chemical Kinetics from 1976 to 1987. He has been a consultant to Union Carbide and Exxon.
Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry sponsored by Du Pont Co. FRANK H. STILLINGER "has made many pioneering and influential contributions to statistical mechanics theory and has critically applied these theories to significantly advance our understanding of the nature of water, aqueous solutions, and liquids in general/' says an admiring colleague. Of particular note, he developed an inherent structure theory that largely unifies and extends current understanding of condensed phase structure and dynamics. Stillinger is a research chemist in the materials chemistry research department of AT&T Bell Laboratories. Born in Boston, he received a B.S. degree from the University of Rochester in 1955 and a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1958, both in chemistry. He remained at Yale as a postdoctoral fellow until 1959, when he joined AT&T Bell Labs. His earlier re-
Widom
search focused on fundamental electrochemistry, intermolecular forces, and structure and absolute stability of anions; more recently, he's focused on the general theory of structure and dynamics of condensed phases. Stillinger's quantification of the idea that liquids possess inherent structures was made possible by combining formal theory and modern computational facilities. Using a mathematically rigorous treatment of the properties of the multidimensional potential energy surface of liquids, Stillinger identified and classified potential energy minima (stable packings). For example, he established that liquid phases of simple atomic substances like noble gases or fused salts possess an underlying inherent structure that is independent of temperature. He pioneered the development and use of atomic force field models that were sufficiently accurate to describe covalent bond formation and yet analytically simple enough to allow extensive molecular dynamics calculations to be made. This technique was first applied to silicon, using molecular dynamics simulations to show that both the crystalline and liquid phase could be accurately portrayed. The award winner also has adapted the inherent structure theory to explain structural and relaxational properties of amorphous solids and glasses. This has led to such noteworthy achievements as a clear identification of atomic configurations producing low-barrier two-level systems, and modeling of hysteresis effects near the glass transition. Stillinger has received numerous honors and awards. He was elected a member of the National Academy of
sponsored by Kendall Co. Probably the most outstanding and best known research of DAVID G. WHITTEN is in photochemical and thermal reactions in Langmuir-Blodgett transferred thin films—research that has resulted in more than 76 of his nearly 200 publications. Whitten is C. E. Kenneth Mees Professor in the department of chemistry at the University of Rochester. The award winner received a B.A. degree in chemistry from Johns Hopkins University in 1959 and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from there in 1963. Upon graduation, he went to California Institute of Technology as a research fellow. In 1966 he joined the faculty at the University of North Carolina as assistant professor. He moved to Rochester in 1983. Whitten began his photochemistry work in the early 1970s with studies of monolayers at the air-water interface and of supported multilayers built up from the monolayer films. This work led to studies of other surfactant assemblies, especially those in aqueous solution, including micelles and bilayer vesicles. Whitten and his coworkers have contributed significantly to understanding the solubilization properties of detergent micelles in both the driving force for solubilization and the nature of the environment of dissolved molecules. Their studies show that most solutes bind at an interfacial site in detergent micelles and help explain the micelles' unusual ability to dissolve substances that are often insoluble in both hydrocarbon and aqueous solutions. More recently, Whitten has probed the complexity of more structured surfactant assemblies, including phospholipid bilayers and microemulsions. Current research focuses October 28, 1991 C&EN
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on the use of colloidal media to control the assembly of supramolecular species from individual functionalized amphiphiles. In addition to his contributions in surface and colloid chemistry, Whitten and his coworkers have carried out noteworthy studies in lightinduced electron-transfer reactions, photoisomerization, and other photochemical processes, and in chemical and photochemical reactivity of porphyrins and their metal complexes. His photochemistry research led to his election as president of the InterAmerican Photochemical Society and as chairman of the 10th IUPAC Photochemistry Symposium in 1984. Whitten also was instrumental in Rochester's selection as one of the sites for a National Science Foundation Center for Science & Technology. He coordinated the preparation of a proposal, one of 340 received by NSF, and it was selected as one of 11 funded. The facility, the Center for Photoinduced Charge Transfer, is directed by Whitten and is the only one strongly focused on chemistry.
Frederic Stanley Kipping Award in Organosilicon Chemistry sponsored by Dow Corning Corp. "No one," writes a colleague, "has done research in organosilicon chemistry so important and significant as that of NILS WIBERG, during the past [several] years." Wiberg is a professor of chemistry at the University of Munich, where he has been a faculty member since 1966. Wiberg's research embraces silyl, germyl, and stannyl derivatives of nitrogen; multiple-bond silicon, germanium, and tin compounds; and hydrogen-nitrogen compounds. His contributions have centered on his breakthrough discoveries of multiple-bond silicon compounds—the silanimines, R 2 Si=NR / , and "unperturbed" silènes, R2Si=CR/2. He is responsible for most of what is known about the chemistry of these important new classes of compounds. In particular, he has studied cyclic adducts of silanimines and silènes, which serve as "storage molecules" 32
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for the reactive double-bond compounds, releasing them upon heating. He and his group have investigated n u m e r o u s complexes of silènes and silanimines with Lewis bases and demonstrated the order of acidity: R 2 Si=NR / > R 2 Si=CR / 2 > R 2 Si=SiR 2 . In addition, the award w i n n e r has studied Diels-Alder, Ene, [2+3] cycloaddition, and Wittig-type reactions involving these multiple-bond compounds. To this earlier work, which includes the first preparation of silylated diazenes and tetrazenes, for example (CH3)3Si-N=N-Si(CH3)3 and [(CH 3 )3Si] 2 N-N = N-N[Si(CH 3 )3] 2 , Wiberg now has added the chemistry of highly sterically shielded, tritert-butyl silicon ("supersilyl") comp o u n d s . His e x p e r i m e n t s h a v e yielded the first stable silyl triazene,
(terf-Bu) 3 Si-N=N-NH-Si(terf-Bu) 3 ; the superdisilane (tert-Bu)3Si-Si(tertBu) 3 , which in fact possesses the longest Si-Si bond ever found and works as an excellent precursor of supersilyl radicals, (tert-B\x)3Sl· ; new multiple-bond silicon compounds with Si=N, Si=P, and Si=C bonds; and the novel tetrahedral aluminum cluster, [(terf-Bu)3SiAl]4. "His lecture on this work," comments a colleague, "was the outstanding talk at the International Symposium on Organosilicon Chemistry," held in Edinburgh, Scotland, in July 1990. Wiberg received bachelor's (1958) and doctoral (1961) degrees from the University of Munich. He has published more than 130 papers and is author of "Textbook of Inorganic Chemistry," de Gruyter, Berlin, 1985, now being translated into English.
Joel Henry Hildebrand Award in the Theoretical & Experimental Chemistry of Liquids sponsored by Du Pont Co. BENJAMIN WIDOM is widely regarded as one of the modern pioneers in the thermodynamic properties of liquids, having contributed several pivotal breakthroughs in the understanding of classical fluids. His work, viewed as "uniformly characterized by an elegant simplicity and incisiveness," is frequently cited. And it has often provided the underpinnings upon which other work has been built. The awardee, Goldwin Smith Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., is perhaps most noted for his "particle-insertion" method for determining the free energies of liquids. Through its relation of chemical potential to fluid structure, Widom's particle-insertion method forms the basis of one of the main modern techniques for obtaining the properties of dense liquids and liquid mixtures by computer simulation. In addition, this method provided a starting point for a derivation of the generalized van der Waals theory of fluids. Widom also performed research that strongly influenced the formulation of homogeneity and scaling principles of liquids. This work underlies current theory of the phase
transitions that liquids and liquid solutions undergo and describes the structures and tensions of interfaces between fluid phases. In the field of complex fluids such as membranes and micellized surfactant solutions, Widom also has made his mark. By introducing the lattice theory of phase behavior in oilwater-surfactant systems, he forged an understanding of microemulsions and related solutions using spin hamiltonian techniques. His recent work continues on this theme with studies of polymer-solution interfaces that include predictions of how interfacial tension and structure, incuding polymer-chain conformation at an interface, depend on temperature and degree of polymerization. Born in Newark, N.J., Widom received a B.A. degree from Columbia University in 1949 and a Ph.D. from Cornell in 1953. Among Widom/s honors are the Boris Pregel Award in Chemical Physics from the New York Academy of Sciences (1976), the ACS Irving Langmuir Award in Chemical Physics (1982), and the Dickson Prize for Science from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (1986). The awardee also is a member of the editorial advisory board for Langmuir and Physica A. Theoretical and Statistical Physics. D
