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J. Phys. Chem. B 2001, 105, 8640-8641
Royce W. Murray
Royce, in his UNC office, 2000.
Forward by the Guest Editors This special issue of The Journal of Physical Chemistry is dedicated to Royce Wilton Murray, Kenan Professor of Chemistry and of Applied and Materials Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in honor of his upcoming 65th birthday in January 2002. Many of Royce’s scientific colleagues and friends have come together to assemble a collection of their work in order to pay homage to Royce and to his efforts and accomplishments in chemistry. The wide variety and high quality of science in this special issue are representative of the work that Royce Murray and his research colleagues have amassed over the past 40-plus years; you will find topics such as electron-transfer reactions in monolayers and polymer melts, synthesis of materials that act as molecular rectifiers, characterization of “huge” metal-organic nanoparticle assemblies, and development of theory for coupled electron transfers. The contributors to this special issue want to thank Royce for his never-ending support of chemistry, his friendship and collegial grace over the years, his mentoring of them at various times, and his ability to teach us things we never knew we could learn. It is with great appreciation of all Royce’s contributions to the field of chemistry that we dedicate this Festschrift Edition of The Journal of Physical Chemistry. Please celebrate with us the richness of Royce’s personal and scientific influence on chemical research. Brief Biography of Royce Wilton Murray Royce W. Murray was born in Birmingham, AL, on January 9, 1937. He attended public schools in Birmingham, where he made such a mark that he graduated early from high school. This advanced situation was in part due to his experiences with his father, an electrical expert. Royce’s father had a small shop as a side business, in which Royce learned a great deal about how and how not to design certain types of experiments (vide infra). It is clear that his family was very supportive of his schooling and the extracurricular activities that came along with it.
Royce, at his home in Birmingham, AL, in 1945.
His rapid completion of educational opportunities also marked his undergraduate and graduate work. After a mere 3.5 years at Birmingham Southern College, where he graduated cum laude in chemistry, Royce went on to graduate school in chemistry at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Royce had the opportunity to work there with two of the greats in electrochemistry, Richard Bowers and Don DeFord. With them, Royce capitalized on his previous training and his current environment to become what we would call today a “gear head,” or as some of us referred to him in the late 1980s, “analogue Murray”; he became an expert at building electrochemical equipment from the ground up and applying it to electroanalytical challenges. This aptitude may explain why so many of Royce’s graduate students over the years were required to build (and use!) their own potentiostat. Once again, Royce finished his education in record time, with his stint in Evanston taking only three years. As you will read later in his own recollections, Royce interviewed at several institutions before selecting UNC, where he was hired as an instructor. It is interesting to note that, as Al Bard did, Royce had a “sight unseen” offer from University of Texas. As Royce wonders in his piece later in this issue, we wonder what the world of chemistry would have been like if he and Al Bard had been on the same chemistry faculty! And speaking of wondering, those of us who received substantial
10.1021/jp0125707 CCC: $20.00 © 2001 American Chemical Society Published on Web 09/13/2001
Biography/History of Royce W. Murray
Royce Murray, ca. 1955.
startup funds when we began in academics probably wonder how Royce began such a wonderful first decade at UNC without any startup funds at all. It is clear that Charlie Reilley, his colleague in chemistry and mayhem, had a huge impact on Royce’s first two decades at UNC. Charlie was more than just a mentor to Royceshe was a friend and role model as an educator. From an analytical student’s perspective, having Reilley, Murray, and Buck on the UNC faculty made it a wonderful place to learn. Oh, what it was like to take written Ph.D. cumulative exams from that trio! Royce was promoted from Instructor to Assistant Professor in 1961 and Associate Professor in 1966. At roughly the same time as his promotion to Full Professor (1969), he was made an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow. In 1980, he was named a Kenan Professor of Chemistry and, in 1996, a Kenan Professor of Applied and Materials Sciences. Royce’s service efforts at UNC began early in his career (1967), when he was made Building Committee Chair for construction of the new Kenan Laboratories of Chemistry. This initial service role led him to the position of Acting Chair and Vice Chair of the UNC Chemistry Department in the early 1970s, Director of Undergraduate Studies, and then on to Chair of the Department in the early 1980s. His service to UNC then expanded beyond the boundaries of the Department, as witnessed by his roles as Chair, Division of Basic and Applied Natural Sciences; Chair, Curriculum in Applied and Materials Sciences; and Vice Chair, Division of Basic and Applied Natural Sciences. He has also served in numerous other capacities at UNC. It is of great interest that Royce has come full circle in his service duties to The University, as he is now Chair, Task Force for Planning the Science Complex at UNC, a role that is quite similar in nature to his role in 1967 with the Kenan buildings. However, the scope and magnitude of the effort are quite differentsthe new Science Complex is a 500,000-plus ft.2 complex that will integrate a variety of sciences from around the UNC campus! Service to the chemistry community has been high on Royce’s list of priorities. He served as the National Science Foundation’s first “rotator” in the Chemistry Division in the early 1970s and has been a key participant in NSF activities ever since. Similar activities have been part of Royce’s service record for several funding agencies (Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Department of Energy, Army Research Office, and Office of
J. Phys. Chem. B, Vol. 105, No. 37, 2001 8641 Naval Research). Royce has been involved with the American Chemical Society in numerous roles: Subcommittee on Graduate Level Analytical Chemistry Examination, Division of Chemical Education (1964-74, Chair, 1970-74); Division of Analytical Chemistry, Alternate Councilor (1978-79), Councilor (1980-82); Canvassing Committee, ACS National Awards (1984-86); Advisory Board, Analytical Chemistry (19791981); Program Coordinator, Division of Analytical Chemistry (1985-1989); Committee on Publications (1985-90); Executive Committee, Division of Analytical Chemistry (1991-present). His most familiar public role is Editor-in-Chief of Analytical Chemistry, an opportunity that Royce has enjoyed since 1991 and will continue until at least 2005. Royce’s research accomplishments have been recognized by the many awards he has received, a list of which is provided (vide infra). Of course, that overcast day in Chapel Hill in 1991 when Royce W. Murray was elected to the National Academy of Sciences is something that colleagues of Royce are extremely proud of. His most recent award, The Thomas Jefferson Award at UNC (2001), is the ultimate award in the North Carolina system of higher education. In recognition of his efforts, the State of North Carolina will present Royce with the North Carolina Award in Science in November of 2001. Like Jefferson, Royce has been and is an outstanding thinker and inventor. His excellence in and contributions to chemistry are evidenced by his 350-plus publications, which span the worlds of analytical, physical, inorganic, and materials chemistry. We note that with this issue, 50 of those papers were published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry. In addition, Royce’s outstanding research efforts are embodied by more than the papers he and his colleagues have written together. Numerous undergraduates, more than 70 graduate students, and 40 postdoctoral fellows have worked for Royce at UNC. It is impressive that roughly 20% of past Murray Ph.D. students and 40% of his postdoctoral fellows have gone on into academics, for a total of 33 in academic positions. Through his influence on his associates and students, Royce’s excellence as an educator and mentor in the chemical sciences has enhanced education at universities and laboratories other than UNC. Thanks to All from the Guest Editors! As guest editors, we want to thank all the authors who contributed articles to this Festschrift. We greatly appreciate the efforts of Art Nozik, Senior Editor, and Mostafa El-Sayed, Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Physical Chemistry, for handling the review process associated with the manuscripts, and particularly to Mostafa for his willingness to entertain the initial idea of this special issue. In addition, without the efforts of Debbie Norton and Jocelyn Hicks at UNCsCH, we would not have been able to assemble the material in the front portion of this issue in any humane time frame. Finally, we would like to thank Mirtha Uman˜a-Murray for providing the photos of Royce that appear throughout his self-penned biography and which illustrate the man we’ve known through the various stages of his career (and for keeping Royce on his toes in general!). Debra Rolison Mark Wightman Robin McCarley Guest Editors
