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J. Phys. Chem. B 2006, 110, 18734
Tribute to Robert J. Silbey On June 24-25, 2005, current and former students, postdoctoral researchers, and colleagues of Bob Silbey gathered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to celebrate Bob’s 65th birthday. Talks were presented by many of Bob’s current and former coworkers, exhibiting a remarkable diversity of scientific interests. This special issue of The Journal of Physical Chemistry B represents an effort to bring this science to a wider audience. Bob’s graduate work with Stuart Rice focused on understanding electronic excitations in molecular crystals. After spending one year as a post-doc with Joe Hirschfelder at the University of Wisconsin, Bob began his independent career at MIT. He returned to the problem of excited states in molecular crystals, but now he focused on transport and dynamics. In pioneering work that began in the late 1960s, Bob brought the machinery of many-body theory to bear on the problem of how excitons move through crystalline materials. In particular, using the methods of canonical transformations that had been used in physics to study polaron transport, Bob produced a series remarkable papers that detailed how excitons move, scatter, and decay. The techniques that Bob used were powerful, but not familiar to chemists in those days. In the early 1980s, Bob, with the help of Bob Harris, applied these techniques to the paradigmatic model of tunneling in condensed phases, the SpinBoson problem. At the time, a rather complicated path-integral approach to this problem was being advocated in the physics community. The more “elementary” approach of Silbey and Harris, based on canonical transformations and perturbation theory, was able to explain all of the subtle effects that had been discovered using path integrals. The hallmark of Bob’s work is its close connection to interesting experiments. Bob actively works with experimental-
ists and avoids formal theory that is not in some way connected to measurable quantities. Bob has brought advanced theoretical techniques to bear on a remarkably wide range of problems, including the anomalous dynamic and thermodynamic properties of low-temperature glasses, the optical properties of conjugated polymers, energy and charge transfer in molecular aggregates and the photosynthetic reaction center, and the application and interpretation of nonlinear spectroscopic techniques to these and other systems. In all of these examples, Bob’s work is characterized by both sophistication and clarity in explaining experimental phenomena and predicting new and nontrivial behavior that is accessible to measurement. Those who have crossed paths with Bob know that he is a warm person, a great teacher and mentor, and a remarkable leader. Bob’s teaching abilities are legendary at MIT, and the book Physical Chemistry by Silbey, Alberty, and Bawendi (Wiley: New York, 4th ed., 2004) is widely used in universities across the country. As the current Dean of Science at MIT, Bob’s leadership skills have had broad, positive impact at MIT. Finally, Bob has been an extraordinary mentor for his graduate students and postdoctoral co-workers over the years. Bob has always allowed the members of his group to explore new directions and to work on problems of their own choosing, while at the same time providing guidance, insight, and encouragement. This style of mentoring has led to a tremendous diversity in the research carried out by former members of the Silbey group. The papers presented in this special issue of The Journal of Physical Chemistry B demonstrate this remarkable breadth. Happy Birthday Bob!
Richard A. Friesner Kenneth D. Jordan David Reichman Guest Editors
10.1021/jp062035c CCC: $33.50 © 2006 American Chemical Society Published on Web 09/21/2006
