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Autobiographical Sketch of John C. Tully I was born May 17, 1942, in the Bronx, the son of Pauline and Harry Tully. My family moved to Connecticut the following year, where my father contributed to the war effort working as a machinist at Pratt and Whitney Aircraft Company. After the war, the Tullys remained in Connecticut, where my father worked in construction and my mother as a secretary. I grew up there with my older brother Tom and younger brother Frank, all of us graduating from Conard High School in West Hartford. My major interest as a youth was sports. However, I always loved mathematics and particularly enjoyed perusing my copy of the four-volume “The World of Mathematics” edited by James R. Newman. In addition, Tom helped me build a small laboratory in the basement, where I had fun studying exothermic reactions with my A. C. Gilbert Chemistry Set, later on augmented with additional reagents. Gilbert Chemistry Sets were not as sterile in those days as they became in later years. I enrolled as a freshman at Yale in 1960, where I majored in chemistry with a minor in intramural sports. The poor study habits that I got by with in high school caught up with me in college and my grades were initially mediocre. My immaturity was also a problem. Classmate Eric Woglom and I earned temporary suspensions from Yale resulting from an alleged incident involving water balloons and the 1961 St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New Haven. Toward the end of freshman year, however, I began to realize, first, how privileged I was to be at Yale and, second, that there were many students there who were a lot smarter than I. Phil Pechukas, for one. In addition, I became a part of a terrific cadre of chemistry majors in my class, including current chemistry department faculty members Jon Clardy (Cornell), Anthony Francis (Michigan), and Tom Record (Wisconsin). My research career began in William Doering’s lab, where I carried out organic synthesis, and then continued in Charles Johnson’s lab studying the effects of electron transfer on NMR line shapes. These were very exciting experiences for me and stimulated me to do graduate studies in chemistry. I started graduate school at the University of Chicago in 1964 and joined Steve Berry’s group. This was a great decision; Steve has been an inspiration to me ever since. He has an unsurpassed enthusiasm for science and for life. He generates more creative research ideas than anyone I have ever met. Not all of his ideas prove to be successful, however. My initial thesis project was to carry out the analogue of the Stern-Gerlach experiment on triplet excitons in an anthracene crystal. I promptly demonstrated that this was unfeasible, but by this time, Steve was on sabbatical in Denmark. Temporarily without advisor, project, or equipment, I took the easiest road and began a theoretical project. This was made easier and more enjoyable through daily interactions with the theory wing of the Berry group, Mike Weinberg and Barry Schneider. I was fortunate to become friends with many other outstanding students and postdocs while at Chicago. Two deserve special mention. The first was my tennis doubles partner and a student in Stuart Rice’s group, John Weeks. Our doubles team was reunited later at Bell Labs. The second was my brother Frank, who arrived at Chicago in the fall of 1968, only a few months before I finished my degree. The Chemistry Department intramural basketball team made it to the playoffs that Fall. Frank was among Yuan Lee’s first students and went on to manage the combustion chemistry effort at Sandia Livermore.
He is now on leave from Sandia, serving as a program officer for DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences. After completing a theoretical thesis on molecular photoionization and electron scattering from molecules, I was anxious to return to experimental studies as a postdoc. I chose to work with Richard Wolfgang, who was then at the University of Colorado at Boulder. At that time, Zdenek Herman was a visiting scientist in the Wolfgang group. Zdenek had designed and built an amazingly clever and successful ion-molecule crossed beam apparatus named “EVA” (electron volt accelerator). EVA produced a wealth of important results over the years and provided me with an opportunity to quickly get meaningful data without first constructing an apparatus. In particular, I began a study of the reaction of H+ with D2 and isotopic variants. These experiments were interrupted in the summer of 1969, however, when Dick Wolfgang moved the group to Yale. While students John Krenos, Alfred Lee, and Jim Kerstetter helped Zdenek reconstruct EVA at Yale, I began thinking about the theory of the H+ with D2 reaction. H3+ is simple, containing only two electrons, allowing accurate potential energy surfaces to be obtained. However, the conventional classical trajectory method was inapplicable because transitions between two potential energy surfaces were involved. With the aid of firstyear student Richard Preston, I developed the “surface-hopping” method to overcome this problem. Shortly after arriving at Yale, I met inorganic chemistry graduate student Mary Ellen Thomsen. On our first date, we dined at Mory’s to the singing of the Wiffenpoofs, followed by the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Mary and I have now been married for 31 years. We have three children, Jack, Elizabeth and Stephen, and a daughter-in-law, Jill. Jack is a saxophone player and music teacher and lives with Jill in Malden, Massachusetts. Liz is a computer technician and programmer for an environmental consulting firm in New Haven. Steve is an undergraduate at Yale. I am very proud of them all, without whom my accomplishments, if any, would have been empty and without joy. I accepted a position as Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ, in 1970. I chose this position over academic offers because Mary was offered a postdoctoral position at Bell Labs. When I arrived, I was asked to take over operation of an existing molecular beam apparatus. Upon discovering serious design flaws, I announced that there had been a misunderstanding; I was a theorist. My research has been almost exclusively theoretical ever since. I spent 26 exciting years at Bell Labs, carrying out research in theoretical chemistry and surface science. Bell Labs was a fantastic place, first and foremost, because of its people. Nowhere else could one find so many outstanding scientists in the areas of condensed matter physics, surface science, and physical chemistry. I was influenced by a great many of these people, and many became close friends as well. I renewed my long-time friendship with John Weeks when he joined Bell Labs in 1972. Mark Cardillo joined the Labs a few years later. It was Mark who first got me interested in surface science, initiating a major change in my research directions. Mark’s enthusiasm and humor made Bell Labs more fun, as did his competition on the tennis and racquetball courts. Bob Laudise was my supervisor for much of my time at the Labs. Bob had an extraordinary ability to
10.1021/jp0213809 CCC: $22.00 © 2002 American Chemical Society Published on Web 08/15/2002
7964 J. Phys. Chem. B, Vol. 106, No. 33, 2002 dismiss the nonessential and quickly identify the core of an issue. He could make difficult decisions and insist on maintaining the highest standards, while always placing the concerns and welfare of people first. Whatever managerial skills I have developed are due largely to observing two masters, Bob and Mark. I am grateful also to Bell Labs co-workers Frank Stillinger, Louis Brus, Bill Wilson, Krishnan Raghavachari, Don Murphy, and a host of others. In addition, I would have been lost without the outstanding postdocs who worked with me. I thank particularly two of them, Martin Head-Gordon and Sharon Hammes-Schiffer, for putting together this special issue of The Journal of Physical Chemistry. Beginning about 1990, there was increased pressure for scientists in the Research Area of Bell Labs to make more direct connections to the technologies of the parent company, AT&T. This was a business necessity, and at least initially, it was healthy. It gave me the impetus to get involved in a number of new activities. I helped coordinate design for environment activities at Bell Labs. I became responsible for evaluating the safety of cellular phones manufactured by AT&T, specifically, the amount of microwave radiation absorbed by the user. Methods for numerical solution of Maxwell’s equations are quite similar to those for the Schrodinger equation. I contributed to the holographic data storage effort and to sol-gel processing of optical fibers. Carrying out applied research was rewarding; research can be both useful and intellectually challenging. Nevertheless, in 1996, when AT&T spun off its manufacturing
effort into a new company, Lucent Technologies, I decided to leave Bell Labs and take an academic position. I began my third tour of duty at Yale in the fall of 1996 as a faculty member in the Chemistry Department, with secondary appointments in the Physics and Applied Physics Departments. I am grateful to have been welcomed by a group of superb physical chemists, Gary Brudvig, Jim Cross, Don Crothers, Mark Johnson, Bill Jorgensen, Charlie Schmuttenmaer, Pat Vaccaro, Kurt Zilm, and new addition Victor Batista. When I arrived, a lab in the basement of Kline Chemistry was cleaned out to make room for my new student’s quarters. Among the old pieces of equipment to be discarded was the lid of EVA, the molecular beam apparatus that I had used 26 years earlier as a postdoc. EVA was rescued and is now on display in my office. I came to Yale at a good time. My move coincided with that of my Bell Labs colleague Tom Graedel, who joined the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Moreover, Yale has recently committed substantial resources to greatly enhance its science and engineering facilities and faculty. Among the leaders of this program are two more Bell Labs colleagues, Pierre Hohenberg (Deputy Provost for Science and Technology) and Paul Fleury (Dean of Engineering). I am pleased to be in a position to help Yale achieve this vision. Most importantly, universities are for young people. I thoroughly enjoy daily interactions with students in the classroom and in the laboratory, a new experience for me after so many years at Bell Labs.
