COMMENT Celebrating Werner Stumm
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e dedicate this special issue of ES&T to Professor Werner Stumm, the father of "Aquatic Chemistry," who first coined that term and helped mightily to develop the field. When filling a jar with rocks, to fit them all, it is best to put in the big ones first. Werner Stumm put the big rocks into the jar for us. We have since been filling the interstices with sand and gravel. He brought environmental chemistry of fluid-solid interfaces to new heights by working from a molecular view, thinking about processes at atomic and molecular scales. In particular, through his research on particle-water and air-water interfaces, he made his greatest contributions. Following graduation from the University of Zurich with a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry and a brief stint at the EAWAG Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Dubendorf, where he first encountered water quality problems, Werner went to Harvard as a young postdoctoral student in 1954. At that time, says Werner, he spoke little English, felt he was completely naive, and never expected to gain the rank of tenured full professor. But driven by his love of chemistry, he read voraciously, funded his laboratory with his own money, and began to tackle difficult environmental problems. Werner likes to tell the story about how, shortly after he was promoted to assistant professor at Harvard, a representative from John Wiley & Sons came to his office, put his feet up on the table, and, after introducing himself, said, "So, Professor Stumm, when can I expect your first book?" Werner fumbled, "Well, I can barely speak English. How am I going to write a book?" The publisher replied that every young Harvard professor always writes a book, and he would be waiting for Werner's (and he did). Meanwhile, a fruitful collaboration developed between Werner and his first Ph.D. student, James J. Morgan. They pondered together in the mid-1960s over the works of Lars Gunnar Sillen, Robert Garrels, and Ray Siever on the chemistry of the sea and fresh water and determined that a quantitative treatment was necessary to explain the composition of natural waters. That was the start of a beautiful relationship and led to the production of their masterpiece treatise, Aquatic Chemistry, first published in 1970 by Wiley & Sons. A second edition released in 1981 was followed by a third edition in 1996—the field evolved, and the books got thicker! Combined, the editions have sold over 40,000 copies and have been translated into three languages. In those early days at Harvard, Werner was occupied with studying corrosion chemistry and iron oxidation kinetics and, in collaboration with G. Fred Lee and Phil Singer, eutrophication stoichiometry and coagulationflocculation. Together with his postdoc and cherished 4 4 2 A • OCT. 1, 1998 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / NEWS
colleague, Charles O'Melia, Stumm determined that knowledge of water chemistry is critical to success in coagulating or filtering particles. Their pioneering papers are still widely cited. Stumm felt equally at ease with water treatment problems and natural waters and moved adroidy from chemistry to sanitary (environmental) engineering. After all, both are simply chemistry from a molecular viewpoint. In 1970, Stumm received an offer diat he could not refuse: a chance to return to his native country and assume the Directorship of the Swiss Federal Institute for Water Resources and Water Pollution Control (EAWAGETH.. About that time, he was developing the foundations of surface coordination theory with his Ph.D. students C. E Huang and Rod Jenkins at Harvard and with Professor Paul Schindler at the University of Berne in Switzerland. They quantified surface complexation on oxides by protons and metal cations using the GouyChapman diffuse layer model to make electrostatic corrections for surface equilibria. Laura Sigg provided key experimental evidence in her Ph.D. research at EAWAG that accounted for surface coordination by anions, and Gerhard Furrer, Bernhard Wehrli, and Erich Wieland demonstrated the applicability of the surface complex formation model. During 1970-1992, Stumm led EAWAG to its position as the world's preeminent environmental research laboratory. The research section in this ES&T Special Issue was produced by guest editors Patrick Brezonik, James Drever, Janet Hering, Charles O'Melia, Francois Morel, Laura Sigg, Alan Stone, and Richard Zepp. They were responsible for inviting contributions, selecting reviewers, and making final decisions on die manuscripts. We particularly thank William Glaze, editor of ES&T, ,or initiation oo the idea to oonor Werner, and to Tom Lehman in the ES&T Manuscript Office at Chapel Hill, N.C,, who coordinated the issue. The guest editors and contributors to this festschrift have provided the intellectual underpinnings of various aspects of surface coordination chemistry, including sorption phenomena, surface-catalyzed redox reactions, photocatalytic processes, chemical weathering, dissolution, and precipitation/passivation. We hope that this special issue includes all of the rocks and at least some of the sand and gravel in between. Jerald L. Schnoor, Associate Editor (
[email protected]) 0013-936X/98/0932-442A$15.00/0 © 1998 American Chemical Society
