ACS Fellows associated with the California Section
ACS FELLOWS ASSOCIATED WITH THE CALIFORNIA SECTION
A. Paul Alivisatos 2009 University of California, Berkeley
Paul Alivisatos (born November 12, 1959) is an American scientist of Greek descent who has been hailed as a pioneer in nanomaterials development, and is an internationally recognized authority on the fabrication of nanocrystals and their use in biomedical and renewable energy applications.[3] He is ranked fifth among the world’s 100 top chemists in the list released by Thomson Reuters. In 2009, he was named the Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and in 2014 he was named a laureate for the National Medal of Science. In 2016 he was named U.C. Berkeley’s Vice Chancellor for Research. As of July 1, 2017, he is University of California, Berkeley’s Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, and will continue on as Vice Chancellor for Research on an interim basis.
Alivisatos is also Samsung Distinguished Professor in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Research and Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science & Engineering at UC Berkeley. In addition, he directs the Kavli Energy Nanosciences Institute (ENSI), a new institute on the UC Berkeley campus launched by the Kavli Foundation to explore the application of nanoscience to sustainable energy technologies.
Donald R. Baker* 2009 Stauffer Chemical Company (Retired)
Contribution to the science/profession: Don was an outstanding researcher in agricultural chemistry. He is an inventor on 205 US Patents, a truly remarkable number. He invented several commercially successful materials for his company when employed by Stauffer Chemical Co., later Zeneca Ag Products. After formal retirement, he continued his chemical activities as an editor of agricultural chemistry books, a founder of a company, and as a teacher.
Contribution to the ACS community: Don has been a long and active member of the California Section. He has held many offices in the Section and has served the ACS in several Divisions and on the Council for more than 25 years. He was a member of the California Section Executive Committee for more than 40 years. He was active in the California Coordinating Committee, a group designed to allow the local sections in the state of California maximize their effectiveness. This group predated the ACS Governmental Affairs effort in the local area. Don has received several ACS divisional and local section awards, including the Walter B. Petersen Award from his home Section for service to its members in 1991 and the Fellows Award from the Division of Pesticide and Agrochemica1s of the ACS in 1992.
G. Bryan Balazs 2010 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Bryan Balazs moved to California in 1986 and received his PhD in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1992. At that point, Bryan began his career at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as a post-doc and was hired as a staff chemist in 1994. Following a very satisfying career at LLNL of 25 years, Bryan retired in May of 2017. Over the past 20 years, Bryan has become increasingly involved in the Livermore community and has served on the Boards of Directors for the Pedrozzi Scholarship Foundation and the Livermore Shakespeare Festival, in addition to chairing the Measure G Citizens Oversight Committee in the Livermore school district for the past two years. Bryan is also very active in the American Chemical Society in the areas of education and advocacy for science, and he was recently elected to the Board of Directors for this organization for the term 2020-2022. Bryan lives with his wife Lori and their dog Pepper here in Livermore, where Bryan spends his spare time restoring old cars.
Robert G. Bergman 2011 University of California, Berkeley
Robert G. Bergman was born in Chicago, Illinois, on May 23, 1942. After completing his undergraduate studies in chemistry at Carleton College in 1963, he received his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in 1966 under the direction of Jerome A. Berson. While at Wisconsin he was awarded a National Institutes of Health Predoctoral Fellowship. Bergman spent 1966-67 as a North Atlantic Treaty Organization Fellow in Ronald Breslow’s laboratories at Columbia, and following that went to the California Institute of Technology as a Noyes Research Instructor. He was promoted to assistant professor in 1969, associate professor in 1971, and full professor in 1973. He accepted an appointment as Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, in July 1977, and moved his research group to Berkeley about a year later. In 2002 he was appointed Gerald E. K. Branch Distinguished Professor at Berkeley.
Bergman received an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (1969) and a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Award (1970) while he was an assistant professor. Also while at Caltech, he received a California Institute of Technology Student Government Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1978. After moving to Berkeley, Bergman was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984. Among his other awards are the second American Chemical Society Award in Organometallic Chemistry (1986), an ACS Arthur C. Cope Scholar award in Fall, 1987, the E.O. Lawrence Award in Chemistry (U.S. Department of Energy, 1994) the American Chemical Society Arthur C. Cope Award in 1996, and the ACS James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry (2003). In 2001 he received the Edward Leete Award for Teaching and Research in Organic Chemistry, and in 2002 the UC Berkeley Department of Chemistry Teaching Award. He received an Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2005. In 2007 he was chosen by the National Academy of Sciences to receive the NAS Award in Chemical Sciences. In 2008 he received the T.W. Richards Medal from the Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry Sir Edward Frankland Prize Lectureship. He has been involved in several community outreach education efforts, and for those he received The Chancellor’s Award for Public Service from UC Berkeley in 2008-09 and 2011-12. In 2011 he received the Willard Gibbs Award from the ACS the Chicago Section and ACS Fellow. In 2013 he received the Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Award (2013) and an Honorary Doctorate from Texas A&M University. In 2014 he received several awards the ACS George Olah Award in Hydrocarbon Chemistry, the Welch Foundation Award in Chemistry, and Royal Society of Chemistry Robert Robinson Award. In 2017 he received the University of Wisconsin Distinguished Alumni Award and the Wolf Prize.
Bergman has served as a member of several local and national committees, including the National Institutes of Health Bioanalytical and Metallobiochemistry Study Section (1976-80). At Berkeley he has served as Vice-chair of the Department of Chemistry (1985-87) and three times as Assistant Dean of the College of Chemistry (1987-91, 1996, and 2004-2006). He has been a member of several Editorial Advisory Boards, including the Journal of Organic Chemistry (1980-83; 1996-1998), Organometallics (1981-84 and 1992-95), Chemical Reviews (1981-84), the International Journal of Chemical Kinetics (1986-89), the Journal of the American Chemical Society (1990-95), and Organic Letters (1999 – 2002). He has also been elected to serve on the Executive Committees of both the Organic Division (1981-84) and the Inorganic Division (1984) of the American Chemical Society, the latter as chairman of the Organometallic Subdivision. He has served on Chemistry Department Review Committees for the California Institute of Technology, the University of Nevada at Reno, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Harvard University, Rutgers University, North Carolina State University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara He currently serves on the University of Wisconsin Chemistry Board of Advisors.
Bergman was trained as an organic chemist and spent the first part of his independent career at Caltech investigating the mechanisms of organic reactions. He also developed methods for the generation and study of unusually reactive molecules, such as 1,3-diradicals and vinyl cations. In 1972 he discovered the thermal cyclization of cis-1,5-hexadiyne-3-enes to l,4-dehydrobenzene diradicals. In the 1980’s this transformation of enediynes was identified as a crucial DNA-cleaving reaction in several antibiotics that bind to nucleic acids, and the enediyne reaction is now often referred to as the “Bergman cyclization”. In the mid-1970’s Bergman’s research broadened to include organometallic chemistry. Since moving to Berkeley he has made contributions to the synthesis and chemistry of several types of organotransition metal complexes and to improving our understanding of the mechanisms of their reactions. In this area he has focused on migratory insertion and oxidative addition reactions, the chemistry of new dinuclear complexes, the investigation of organometallic compounds having metal-oxygen and -nitrogen bonds (as part of this work he uncovered one of the earliest examples of early-transition metal alkyne and allene hydroamination processes), and the reactions of organotransition metal enolates. He is probably best known for his discovery of the first soluble organometallic complexes that undergo intermolecular insertion of transition metals into the carbon-hydrogen bonds of alkanes and the use of liquefied noble gas solvents in the study of these reactions, and recently he has been involved in the application of C-H activation reactions to problems in organic synthesis. In other recent efforts he has initiated research in green chemistry, specifically targeting the metal-catalyzed dehydroxylation of polyols and catalyzed methods for the degradation of lignin, and a collaboration aimed at developing catalytic chemistry mediated by supramolecular systems
Bergman transitioned to Emeritus status in 2016 and now holds the titles of Professor of the Graduate School and Gerald E. K. Branch Distinguished Professor Emeritus. He has been recalled by the College of Chemistry and continues to teach, do collaborative research, and continue service and outreach activities for the College and the University. (from U.C. Berkeley)
David Chandler* 2009 University of California, Berkeley
(October 15, 1944 – April 18, 2017) was a physical chemist and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and a winner of the Irving Langmuir Award. He published two books and over 300 scientific articles.
Chandler’s primary area of research was statistical mechanics. With it, he created many of the basic techniques with which condensed matter chemical equilibrium and chemical dynamics are understood with molecular theory. He provided the modern language and concepts for describing structure and dynamics of liquids, a series of contributions that has allowed quantitative and analytical treatments of simple and polyatomic fluids, of aqueous solutions and hydrophobic effects, and of polymeric melts and blends. He also developed the methods by which rare but important events can be simulated on a computer, techniques that culminated in Chandler’s development of a statistical physics of trajectory space. This work enabled his studies of systems far from equilibrium, including processes of self-assembly and the glass transition.
Chandler died on April 18, 2017 in Berkeley, California, at the age of 72.
Chandler’s honors include the Hildebrand and Theoretical Chemistry Awards from the American Chemical Society, the Irving Langmuir Chemical Physics Prize from the American Physical Society, the Bourke and Lennard-Jones Lectureships from the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Hinshelwood Lectureship from the University of Oxford, the Hirschfelder Prize from the University of Wisconsin, Mulliken Prize from the University of Chicago, election to the National Academy of Sciences and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was elected Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2011[2]. He was twice awarded a Miller Professorship at the University of California Berkeley. In 2016, he was named Miller Senior Fellow of the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science.
Carl Djerassi* 2009 Stanford University
Austrian-born American chemist (born Oct. 29, 1923, Vienna, Austria—died Jan. 30, 2015, San Francisco, Calif.), was one of the first to synthesize norethindrone, a steroid hormone initially produced in 1951 that later became one of the most widely used active ingredients in oral contraceptives. After Djerassi moved (1939) to the U.S., he earned a bachelor’s degree (1942) in chemistry from Kenyon College. Working as a chemist for the pharmaceutical company Ciba, he co-developed tripelennamine, one of the earliest commercial antihistamines. In 1949, having received a Ph.D. (1945) in organic chemistry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and having spent another four years at Ciba, he moved to Mexico City to work for Syntex Laboratories. There Djerassi was part of the team that produced norethindrone, a synthetic form of progestin. Other researchers later determined that norethindrone was especially potent in regulating the condition of the endometrium. His breakthrough in synthesizing the hormone inspired a lifelong interest in women’s rights. In the early 1950s Djerassi returned to academia, joining the faculty at Wayne University (later Wayne State University), whence he eventually moved (1959) to Stanford University, where he remained until his retirement (2002). In 1968 Djerassi founded Zoecon, a pest-control company, based on his work with so-called biorational insecticides, which were designed to be more eco-friendly than existing agents. In 1979 he established the Djerassi Resident Artists Program at his 486-ha (1,200-ac) ranch in California; the program was a tribute to his daughter, a poet and an artist, who had committed suicide a year earlier. In the late 1980s Djerassi began writing fiction in a genre that he dubbed “science-in-fiction.” His first novel, Cantor’s Dilemma, appeared in 1989. Djerassi received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science (1973). (from Britannica)
Mark D. Frishberg 2015 Eastman Kodak and Eastman Chemical Company / Seres Laboratories, Inc. (Retired)
Contribution to the science/profession: Contributed to the commercialization of 16 drugs (including four blockbusters) and medical devices through the application of technical and management skills and invented the magenta dye for thermal transfer imaging products.
Contribution to the ACS community: Dedicated to chemical career counseling and public outreach. Also served on six ACS national committees and as a Local Section Councilor (California, Rochester) and Chair (California, Northeast Tennessee).
Glenn Fuller* 2009 U.S. Department of Agriculture (Retired)
Glenn Fuller made a lifetime of significant contributions to the California Section in many different roles, including being Chair of the California Section. However, his true passion in the Section was Project SEED, the education of students through research. This award was established in 2012 in his memory and is supported by the California Section.
Born in Lancaster, California, Glenn Fuller received his B.S. in Chemistry from Stanford University in 1950 and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Illinois in 1953. He then went to work for Shell Development Company in Emeryville until 1964 when he began teaching at Mills College in Oakland. In 1965 he joined the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Western Regional Research Center where he worked until his retirement in 1993.
Dr. Fuller’s ACS activities span the California Section, from the Agricultural and Food Chemistry Division, to the Western Regional Meeting. He is an active participant in the Chemathon program of intensive local high school activity in chemical information partially sponsored by the California Section. He has been program chair and division chair and received the Distinguished Service Award of the Agricultural and Food Chemistry Division in 1999.
Dr. Fuller has a long connection with the Western Regional Meeting. He started as co-chair of the program committee in 1982, and became general chair of the meeting in 1998. He has been a long-time member of the steering committee.
In addition to his ACS activities, Dr. Fuller is the author of more than seventy publications and four patents.
Teresa Lyn Head-Gordon 2018 University of California, Berkeley
Contribution to the science/profession: Recognized for the development of theoretical models and computational methodologies applied in chemical physics and biophysics for water and solvation, macromolecules and assemblies, polymers, interfaces, and catalysis.
Contribution to the ACS community: Recognized for exceptional service to the ACS through leadership as PHYS Division Councilor, member of the National Award Selection Committee, Symposia organizer, and editorial advisory board member for the ACS Journal of Physical Chemistry.
Martin Paul Head-Gordon 2012 University of California, Berkeley
Contribution to the science/profession: Main research achievements have significantly advanced the state of the art in electronic structure calculations, as a result of new developments in quantum chemical theory, algorithms, and analysis.
Contribution to the ACS community: Volunteered as Program Chair (2009) and Chair (2010) of the Division of Physical Chemistry, Chair of the Theory Subdivision (2003); symposium organization, and service on ACS journal editorial boards.
Clayton H. Heathcock 2009 University of California, Berkeley
Clayton Heathcock is an organic chemist, Professor of Chemistry, and Dean of the College of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Heathcock is well known for his accomplishments in the synthesis of complex polycyclic natural products and for his contributions to the chemistry community. In 1995 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Clayton Heathcock received his B.Sc. in chemistry in 1958 from Abilene Christian University and a Ph.D in organic chemistry in 1963 from the University of Colorado. His graduate work was carried out under the direction of Alfred Hassner and dealt with the synthesis of steroidal heterocycles. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Gilbert Stork at Columbia University. In 1964, he joined the faculty at UC Berkeley where he is currently Professor in the Graduate School and Dean of the College of Chemistry.
Heathcock is known for tackling the chemical synthesis of complex, polycyclic natural products, often possessing unusual biological activity including Daphniphyllum alkaloids, altohyrtin, zaragozic acid, spongistatins, and many others. He has also developed novel methodology for organic synthesis such as a modification of the Evans aldol reaction.
In addition to his research and teaching accomplishments, Clayton Heathcock has contributed to the chemical community by serving as chairman of the Division of Organic Chemistry of the American Chemical Society (ACS), chairman of the National Institutes of Health Medicinal Chemistry Study Section, chairman of the Gordon Research Conference on Stereochemistry, chair of the Chemistry Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Editor-in Chief of the journals Organic Syntheses and the Journal of Organic Chemistry.
Clayton Heathcock is the author of several hundred research papers [1] and a coauthor of the popular college textbook Introduction to Organic Chemistry.
Awards that Clayton Heathcock has received include Ernest Guenther Award (ACS) (1986); ACS Award for Creative Work in Organic Synthesis (1990); A.C. Cope Scholar (1990); Prelog Medal, ETH (1991); American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991); National Academy of Sciences (1995); Centenary Medal, Royal Society of Chemistry (1996); H. C. Brown Award (ACS) (2002); Paul Gassman Award for Distinguished Service (ACS) (2004). (from Wikipedia)
Darleane Christian Hoffman 2009 University of California, Berkeley
Born November 8, 1926, Dr. Hoffman is an American nuclear chemist who was among the researchers who confirmed the existence of Seaborgium, element 106. She is a faculty senior scientist in the Nuclear Science Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor in the graduate school at UC Berkeley. In acknowledgment of her many achievements, Discover Magazine recognized her in 2002 as one of the 50 most important women in science.
She was born as Darleane Christian on November 8, 1926 at home in the small town of Terril, Iowa, and is the daughter of Carl B. and Elverna Clute Christian. Her father was a mathematics teacher and superintendent of schools; her mother wrote and directed plays.
When she was a freshman in college at Iowa State College (now Iowa State University), she took a required chemistry course taught by Nellie May Naylor, and decided to pursue further study in that field. She received her B. S. (1948) and Ph. D. (1951) degrees in chemistry (nuclear) from Iowa State University.
Darleane C. Hoffman was a chemist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for a year and then joined her husband at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory where she began as a staff member in 1953. She became Division Leader of the Chemistry and Nuclear Chemistry Division (Isotope and Nuclear Chemistry Division) in 1979. She left Los Alamos in 1984 to accept appointments as tenured professor in the Department of Chemistry at UC Berkeley and Leader of the Heavy Element Nuclear & Radiochemistry Group at LBNL. Additionally, she helped found the Seaborg Institute for Transactinium Science at LLNL in 1991 and became its first Director, serving until 1996 when she “retired” to become Senior Advisor and Charter Director.
Over her career, Hoffman studied the chemical and nuclear properties of transuranium elements and confirmed the existence of seborgium. (from Wikiedia)
Mick Hurrey 2016 SteadyMed Therapeutics
Mick has 14 years of pharmaceutical and device development experience within large multi-national biotechs to small innovative start-ups. His projects have ranged from solid oral dosage forms to computer controlled parenteral combination products across antiviral, oncology, and cardiopulmonary indications. Prior to joining InCarda, he served as the Senior Director of Pharmaceutical Development at SteadyMed Therapeutics working to launch a drug/device combination therapy for pulmonary arterial hypertension. Prior to SteadyMed, Mick worked at both Gilead Sciences and Vertex Pharmaceuticals.
Mick earned his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Central Florida and a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Over his career, Mick has earned numerous awards for outstanding contributions both at his employer and for external organizations such as the ACS and IUPAC.
Enrique Iglesia 2010 University of California, Berkeley
Enrique Iglesia is the Theodore Vermeulen Chair Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and a Faculty Senior Scientist in the E.O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
He received his B.S. degree summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1977 and his Ph.D. degree in 1982 from Stanford University both in Chemical Engineering. In 1993, he joined the University of California at Berkeley after eleven years of research and management experience in heterogeneous catalysis at the Corporate Research Labs of Exxon Research and Engineering. He is the Director of the Berkeley Catalysis Center, which includes eight faculty members in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering.
He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2008 and as a Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2010. He has received a Humboldt Senior Scientist Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and a Doctor Honoris Causa from the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia. During 2011, he has been recognized with the Gabor A. Somorjai Award for Creative Research in Heterogeneous Catalysis of the American Chemical Society, the Alpha Chi Sigma Award for Excellence in Chemical Engineering Research of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the Franςois Gault Lectureship Award of the European Federation of Catalysis Societies. His research has also been recognized with the George A. Olah Award in Hydrocarbon Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, the Award for Excellence in Natural Gas Conversion, the Wilhelm Manchot Chemistry Prize of the Technical University of Munich, the Richard H. Wilhelm Award in Chemical Reaction Engineering of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and the Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis of the Catalysis Society. He has also received the Robert Burwell Lectureship of the Catalysis Society and the V.N. Ipatieff Professorship at Northwestern University. He was named the Cross Canada Lecturer of the Chemical Institute of Canada in 2011 and the inaugural recipient of the Tanabe Prize in Acid-Base Catalysis in 2009.
His teaching awards include the Donald Sterling Noyce Prize, the top teaching award in the physical sciences at Berkeley, the Best Teacher Award of the College of Chemistry, and the Best Teacher Award of the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Award for Excellence in Teaching of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
Professor Iglesia is the former Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Catalysis (1997-2010) and serves as President of the North American Catalysis Society. He has served as chairman of the Division of Petroleum Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, as a Director in the Division of Catalysis and Reaction Engineering in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and in the Editorial Board of several leading journals in the catalysis field.
His research interests include the synthesis and the structural and mechanistic characterization of inorganic solids useful as catalysts for chemical reactions important in energy conversion, petrochemical synthesis, and environmental control. (from U.C. Berkeley)
Johanna M. Jansen 2011 Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research
Dr. Hanneke Jansen is the Head of the Computer-Aided Drug Discovery (CADD) group at the Emeryville site of the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research. Her group develops and applies CADD approaches to projects at all stages of the global portfolio to impact drug discovery. Hanneke’s research interests include the design of relevant compound sets for hit generation, improved predictive modeling that leverages large complex datasets, and developing computational chemistry & data-mining methods that can be integrated into state-of-the-art workflows to inform decision-making from target-ID and validation through hit generation and optimization. Prior to Novartis, Hanneke worked at Chiron Corporation and at Astra.
Hanneke is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society and the founder of the Teach-Discover-Treat initiative, which is an initiative to provide high quality computational chemistry tutorials that impact education and drug discovery for neglected diseases. She received her Ph.D. in Computational Medicinal Chemistry from the School of Pharmacy, University of Groningen (Netherlands) and completed a postdoctoral term at the BioMedical Center of Uppsala University (Sweden). (from Novartis website)
Judith P. Klinman 2011 University of California, Berkeley
Judith P. Klinman (born April 17, 1941) is an American chemist, biochemist, and molecular biologist known for her work on enzyme catalysis. She became the first female professor in the physical sciences at UC Berkeley in 1978. In 2012, she was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Barack Obama.
She earned her A.B. from University of Pennsylvania in 1962 and Ph.D. in physical-organic chemistry from the same university in 1966. After earning her Ph.D., she completed her postdoctoral training at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and was a researcher at the Institute for Cancer Research in Philadelphia. In 1974, she joined the University of Pennsylvania as an Assistant Professor of biophysics. In 1978, she moved to University of California, Berkeley as an Associate Professor in Chemistry and later as the chair of the university’s Chemistry Department. In 1978 she was the first female faculty member in the physical sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently the Professor of the Graduate School at the Departments of Chemistry and Molecular and Cell Biology and the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences at the University of California, Berkeley. Her group has discovered that room temperature hydrogen tunneling occurs among various enzymatic reactions, such as enzymatic C-H cleavage, and clarified the dynamics of tunneling process through data analysis. They have also discovered the quino-enzymes, a new class of redox cofactors in eukaryotic enzymes. She also served the Chancellor’s Professor for University of California Berkeley. She currently serves as the Professor of the Graduate School.
Lee Hamilton Latimer 2012 Independent Consultant
Contribution to the science/profession: Leading medicinal, process, and analytical chemistry teams for Alzheimer’s Disease program at Elan Pharmaceuticals; contributions at other companies to chemistry for emphysema and cardiovascular therapy programs.
Contribution to the ACS community: Service at the Local Section level as Chair of the Rochester and California Sections; national-level service as Chair of the Committee on Local Section Activities and developing joint activities among sections.
William A. Lester, Jr. 2011 University of California, Berkeley
Distinguished theoretical chemist William Lester, Jr., was born on April 24, 1937, in Chicago, Illinois, where he attended all-black elementary schools due to racial segregation. After World War II, Lester’s family moved and he attended a formerly all-white high school; he went on to receive his B.S. degree in 1958, and his master’s degree in chemistry in 1959 from the University of Chicago. Lester obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., in 1964.
Lester developed his interest in science at an early age; during his senior year in high school, he used his typing skills to obtain a part-time job in the physics department of the University of Chicago, which gave him a chance to explore the potential of a future career in the sciences. Entering the University of Chicago on a history scholarship, Lester set scoring records in basketball, two of which were still standing after forty-eight years. While at Catholic University, Lester worked at the National Bureau of Standards as a member of the scientific staff; his work at the Bureau helped him to meet the requirements for his doctoral dissertation on the calculation of molecular properties. Lester obtained a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Wisconsin in Madison where he worked on the molecular collision theory. The IBM Corporation then hired Lester to work at its research laboratory in San Jose, California. Later, as the director of the National Resource for Computation in Chemistry, Lester organized and led the first unified effort in computational chemistry in the United States.
Lester later joined the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley as a professor of chemistry, where his research focused on the theoretical studies of the electronic structure of molecules. Lester’s efforts at Berkeley extended the powerful quantum Monte Carlo method to a wider range of chemical problems. In 2002, Lester became the president of the Pac-10 Conference.
Throughout his career, Lester published over 200 papers in his field, and was awarded numerous honors for his research and teaching. Lester held memberships in several professional organizations including the American Physical and Chemical Societies, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was also elected a fellow of the APS, ACS, and AAAS. In addition to his professional activities, Lester remained committed to science education and sparking an interest in pursuing science careers in minority students.
Lester and his wife, Rochelle (deceased), raised two children: son, William A. Lester, III, and daughter, Allison L. Ramsey. (from The History Makers)
Alex Madonik 2014 Green Science Policy Institute
Contribution to the science/profession: Developed formulations and manufacturing processes for pioneering applications of automated DNA/RNA analysis in research and clinical laboratories, including human leukocyte antigen genotyping, cystic fibrosis mutation analysis, and HIV genotyping.
Contribution to the ACS community: As the California Local Section’s National Chemistry Week Coordinator, organized dozens of outreach events in middle schools, museums, and libraries, where volunteers inspired kids and parents to support STEM education.
C. Bradley Moore 2010 University of California, Berkeley
Moore was among the first chemists to use lasers in the 1960s and opened major new areas of molecular energy transfer, chemical reaction kinetics and photochemistry. In recent years he provided quantitative benchmarks for theories of chemical bond breaking. His work provides a strong foundation for models of atmospheric and combustion chemistry. (from U.C. Berkeley)
Daniel M. Neumark 2010 University of California, Berkeley
Daniel M. Neumark (born 1955) is an American chemist focusing on physical chemistry and molecular structure and dynamics. He specializes in the use of ultra-high vacuum techniques (including molecular beams) and photochemistry to characterize the quantum states of elusive or short-lived chemical entities in the gas phase.
Neumark obtained his B.A. and M.A. from Harvard University and went on to earn his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from University of California, Berkeley in the lab of future Nobel laureate Yuan T. Lee. From 1984 to 1986 he was a postdoctoral fellow at University of Colorado. He currently is a professor at University of California, Berkeley. He was the Director of the Chemical Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 2000 to 2010.
Neumark won the William F. Meggers Award in 2005, the Irving Langmuir Award in 2008, the Herbert P. Broida Prize in 2013, and the Bourke Award in 2018. He is an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and American Physical Society.
Heino Nitsche* 2011 University of California, Berkeley
Nitsche was born July 24, 1949, in Munich, Germany. Born four years after the end of World War II, Nitsche came of age as the success of the Marshall Plan was helping to lift Europe out of its post-war poverty. His mother was a homemaker and his father an electrical engineer who worked for Rohde and Schwarz, an electronic instrumentation company that is still headquartered in Munich.
Nitsche attended high school at the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich and graduated in the spring of 1968. At first Nitsche enrolled in a university close to home, the Universität Erlangen Nürnberg, about 100 miles to the north of Munich.
He transferred to the Freie Universität Berlin in the spring of 1969, bringing with him the interest in chemistry he had developed the previous semester. Nitsche completed his chemistry B.S. in 1976.
As a graduate student, Nitsche studied nuclear chemistry and electrochemistry and performed experiments on the conductivity of uranium. He wrote his dissertation on the transference numbers of neptunium in less than four years and earned his Ph.D. in 1980.
In September 1980, Nitsche arrived at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for a one-year staff scientist appointment. Nitsche’s stay at LBNL lasted much longer than he expected. By 1984 he was a lab investigator with his own research group. Nitsche’s early research focused on the environmental chemistry of actinides but later grew to include the search for new heavy elements.
In 1989 the Berlin Wall came down, leading to Germany’s reunification. That year was prominent for Nitsche for another reason—that year he married Martha Boccalini. Four years later, in 1993, the couple left Berkeley and moved to Germany, where Nitsche had a new appointment as the head of Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (Dresden-Rossendorf Research Center).
Nitsche assumed the directorship of the center’s Institute of Radiochemistry. He also became a full professor of radiochemistry at the Technische Universität, Dresden, now the largest technical university in Germany.
Nitsche and his wife stayed for five years. In 1998 he was lured back to Berkeley by an offer to become a full professor in the Department of Chemistry, a senior research scientist at LBNL and the founding director of LBNL’s new Glenn T. Seaborg Center.
At LBNL, Nitsche continued his research on the heaviest elements, their chemical properties and how they fit into the periodic table. He also led the Heavy Element Nuclear and Radiochemistry Group. Along with collaborators at LBNL and Europe, Nitsche confirmed the existence of element 114, first synthesized by researchers in Dubna, Russia.
When his other responsibilities did not dominate his schedule, Nitsche continued his research collaborations in Europe, Japan, China and other parts of the globe. He often traveled to the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany, where he recently helped confirm the existence of element 117. The team included several of his former students and LBNL colleagues.
Nitsche was a dynamic presence at the College of Chemistry. He often taught Chem 1A and sometimes taught both of the lecture sections during the spring semester. He was one of the main organizers of the symposium honoring the 100th Birthday of Glenn T. Seaborg on April 19, 2012.
In 2014 Nitsche won the Hevesy Medal, the premier international award of excellence honoring outstanding achievements in radioanalytical and nuclear chemistry. (from U.C. Berkeley)
Attila E. Pavlath 2010 U.S. Department of Agriculture, ARS Western Regional Research Center
Attila Pavlath is a senior emeritus scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). He received his education in Budapest, Hungary. After his stint as an assistant professor at the Technical University of Budapest, he left Hungary in 1956 and joined McGill University, Canada, as a research fellow. In 1958, he joined Stauffer Chemical Company, California, to lead a research group on agriculture-related problems. In 1967, he joined the USDA, where he headed several research projects at the Western Regional Research Center, Albany, California, and is still involved in research. Dr. Pavlath has published more than 130 research papers, has authored 10 books and numerous chapters, and holds 25 patents. In 1997 he received the Pioneer of the Year award from the American Institute of Chemists. In 1999 he was elected president of the American Chemical Society, and in 2004 he was elected to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. (from Amazon)
James Postma 2022 California State University, Chico
Dr. James Postma received a B.A. in chemistry from CSU, Chico and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry
from the University of California, Davis. He then returned to join the faculty of the CSU, Chico
chemistry department in 1982. He taught general, physical, and analytical chemistry courses as
well as serving as department chair from 1998 to 2004. He is the co-author (along with Julian L.
Roberts and J. Leland Hollenberg of the University of Redlands) of Chemistry in the Laboratory,
editions 1-7, a widely-used laboratory text for freshman general chemistry courses. He was the
chief science officer of a local biotechnology start-up, Advanced Light Technologies and he holds
patents for a few food-processing techniques. He serves on the executive committee of the
California Section of the American Chemical Society and was the Section Chair in 2012, 2017, and
2020 and Councilor from 2019-2024. He represented Chico State in the CSU Statewide
Academic Senate which he chaired in 2010-12. He also served as Chair of the California Science
Project Advisory Board. He received the CSU, Chico Outstanding Faculty Service Award in 2005
Contribution to the science/profession: Recognized for his research into critical environmental.
Issues, exemplary efforts to improve higher education access within California, and for his four
decades of teaching and mentoring underrepresented students in chemistry.
Contribution to the ACS community: Recognized for initiating the ACS Northern California
Subsection for Chico to further advocate for and better serve these chemists and providing inclusive
mentorship in the California section leadership pipeline.
Kenneth N. Raymond 2013 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory / University of California, Berkeley
Contribution to the science/profession: Was the first chemist to study siderophores, microbial iron chelating agents used by bacteria. Used the siderophores as models for preparing synthetic metal-ion selective chelating agents.
Contribution to the ACS community: Has served as Chair of the Division of Inorganic Chemistry, Co-Chair of the National Research Council Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology, a member of many editorial boards, and a frequent agency reviewer.
Richmond Sarpong 2019 University of California – Berkeley
Contribution to the science/profession: Recognized for elegant and practical strategies for the total synthesis of structurally complex and biologically active natural products, and for the development of new C-C and C-H activation methods.
Contribution to the ACS community: Recognized for service to the Organic Division, for mentorship of under-represented minority chemists, and for communicating the value of chemistry to the lay public on a global scale.
Margareta Séquin 2020 San Francisco State University (Emeritus)
Contribution to the science/profession: Recognized for decades of teaching and mentoring undergraduate students in organic chemistry, for sharing her expertise in plant chemistry, and tireless efforts to make organic chemistry accessible to the general public.
Contribution to the ACS community: Recognized for her dedicated service to the California Local Section as Chair, Program Chair, WCC Co-Chair, for organizing innovative outreach events and for connecting her academic department with the ACS.
Dawn Angela Shaughnessy 2018 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Contribution to the science/profession: Recognized for her scientific leadership in heavy element research, including her role as co-discoverer of four transactinide elements, as well as her inspiration and encouragement of young scientists into actinide and radiochemistry research.
Contribution to the ACS community: Recognized for her distinguished service in the Division of Nuclear Chemistry and Technology as an Alternate Councilor and as an organizer of national symposia, and for her enthusiastic service on the ACS Women Chemists Committee.
Mary F. Singleton 2009 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Retired)
Mary Singleton was born in 1936 in Fort Lewis, Washington. She received her B.S. (1958) in Chemistry from Wheaton College (Wheaton, Illinois), graduating summa cum laude. She received her M.S. (1960) in Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1960-1962 she worked with Melvin Calvin, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1961, at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1962 she left Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and for the next twelve years she raised her children and moved to Europe, Wisconsin and California as her husband’s job required.
Singleton began working again in 1974 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, where she worked for twenty-two years. Most of her career was in research, including tritium-getter materials, oil shale processing, and growth of nonlinear optical crystals for the LLNL laser project. When she retired at the end of 1996 she was deputy plutonium facility manager. Soon after retirement, she enrolled as a student at the University of California, Berkeley in the Division of the History of Science and Technology and attended Oxford University during the summer of 2000. Her studies focused on the history of women in science, including the Manhattan Project and Dorothy Hodgkin’s students.
In 1998 Singleton was among five other female employees of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who filed a lawsuit against the Lab on December 23, 1998. They charged that the Lab paid and promoted female lab employees, in a variety of job categories, less than their male counterparts with comparable education and experience. The situation was facilitated by a system of annual salary adjustments based on a subjective method which ranked an employee based on their relative “value” to other employees, called the “Relative Value Rank.” The settlement in November of 2003 required the lab to make significant reforms and benefited over 3000 female employees who worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory at the time. Singleton had been removed as a plaintiff in the original case since when she retired she had signed an agreement to surrender her right to sue the University of California. She negotiated a separate agreement.
Singleton has been an active member in the American Chemical Society (ACS), serving on the Women Chemists Committee of the ACS and as chair of the California Section. (from Iowa State University Archives)
Igor Sobolev 2012 Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation (Retired)
Contribution to the science/profession: Serving initially as Kaiser Aluminum’s science representative, contributions to international research programs on stratospheric ozone depletion by fluorocarbons ranged from testimony before government committees (1974 – 1975) to a published study on ozone and Antarctic phytoplankton (2000).
Contribution to the ACS community: Served as Chair of the California Section twice, then as Treasurer (1998 – 2011), and as Trustee (1996 – 2016).
Gabor A. Somorjai 2009 University of California, Berkeley
Gabor A. Somorjai was born in Budapest, Hungary, on May 4, 1935. He was a fourth year student of Chemical Engineering at the Technical University in Budapest in 1956 at the outbreak of the Hungarian Revolution. He left Hungary and emigrated to the United States, where he received his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1960. He became a U.S. citizen in 1962.
After graduation, he joined the IBM research staff in Yorktown Heights, New York, where he remained until 1964. At that time, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1967, he was named Associate Professor, and in 1972 promoted to Professor. Concurrent with his faculty appointment, he is also a Faculty Senior Scientist in the Materials Sciences Division, and Group Leader of the Surface Science and Catalysis Program at the Center for Advanced Materials, at the E.O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Professor Somorjai has educated more than 130 Ph.D. students and 250 postdoctoral fellows. He is the author of more than 1200 scientific papers in the fields of surface chemistry, heterogeneous catalysis, and solid state chemistry. He has written four textbooks, Principles of Surface Chemistry, Prentice Hall, 1972; Chemistry in Two Dimensions: Surfaces, Cornell University Press, 1981; and Introduction to Surface Chemistry and Catalysis, Wiley-Interscience, 1994 and the Second Edition in 2010; as well as a monograph, Adsorbed Monolayers on Solid Surfaces, Springer-Verlag, 1979. (from U.C. Berkeley)
David C. Spellmeyer 2009 Nodality
Dr. Spellmeyer is a biotechnology executive with 25 years of broad experience in the life sciences industry. He currently serves as CSO at Circle Pharma, an SPII VC portfolio company and heads Interlaken Associates where he advises early-stage companies and investors on corporate and technical strategy, product development, commercialization, and funding. He previously served as CTO & CIO at Nodality and in research leadership roles at both large and small companies. Dr. Spellmeyer received his BS in computer science and chemistry from Purdue University and his PhD in theoretical organic chemistry from UCLA. He completed postdoctoral training in pharmaceutical chemistry at UCSF, where he is an adjunct Associate Professor. (from Pandect Bioventures)
Andrew Streitwieser 2009 University of California, Berkeley
Andrew Streitwieser is an American chemist known for his contributions to physical organic chemistry.
Streitwieser was born in 1927 in Buffalo, New York and he grew up in New York City. He attended Columbia College and then Columbia University where he earned a PhD in the research group of William von Eggers Doering in 1952. He then was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of John D. Roberts at MIT. He has been Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley since 1953.
Streitwieser was one of the pioneers of molecular orbital theory and his book Molecular Orbital Theory for Organic Chemists had a lasting impact on the field. He is also well-known for proposing the currently accepted interpretation of the origin of secondary deuterium kinetic isotope effects. Streitwieser developed the technique of using protium/deuterium exchange to measure the acidity of exceedingly weak carbon acids and was a codeveloper of the MSAD acidity scale, named for the first initials of the chemists who developed it. His Chemical Reviews article titled “Solvolytic Displacement Reactions at Saturated Carbon” was influential in the field of physical organic chemistry. Streitwieser is also the author of the widely used university textbook Introduction to Organic Chemistry (4th revised ed., 1998, with Heathcock and Kosower, as well as the autobiography A Lifetime of Synergy With Theory and Experiment.
Streitwieser was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1969 and is an American Chemical Society Fellow. He is the recipient of the ACS Award in Petroleum Chemistry (1967), James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry (1982), the Guggenheim Fellowship (1968), the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (1989), and the Roger Adams Award (2009). (from Wikipedia)
Anne Kuhlmann Taylor 2013 CTD Quality Consulting
Contribution to the science/profession: Wrote and edited Chemistry and Manufacturing documents, used for registration of new drugs, for the client pharmaceutical company. Helped client companies file more than 20 applications with the FDA.
Contribution to the ACS community: Has served the Baton Rouge Local Section as National Chemistry Week Co-Coordinator and in planning of Super Science Saturday for 10 years which attracts 1500+ children, parents, and volunteers for hands-on science activities.
T. Don Tilley 2014 University of California, Berkeley / Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Contribution to the science/profession: Recognized for contributions to research, teaching, and service in the inorganic chemistry and catalysis communities and for discoveries of new transformations and compounds involving main group elements and the transition metals.
Contribution to the ACS community: Recognized for his instrumental support of young investigators and his leadership in the Division of Inorganic Chemistry in promoting the field on an international level and within the ACS.
Jeanette Marie Van Emon 2012 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Jeanette Van Emon completed her Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis and postdoctoral studies from the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. Her research at the U.S. EPA includes the development and application of immunochemical methods for environmental monitoring and human exposure assessment including biomarker discovery through proteomics. She is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and serves as an ACS Division Councilor, Chairman of the Western Regional Board and editorial board member of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. She has published more than 60 papers in reputed journals in addition to several EPA reports and presentations at national and international meetings.
Contribution to the science/profession: Developed and applied some of the first immunoassay methods for environmental contaminants and fostered acceptance of the technology by building partnerships and facilitating information exchanges within and outside the EPA.
Contribution to the ACS community: Chair of the Western Regional Board, Councilor for the Agrochemicals Division, Editorial Advisory Board member for JAFC. Co-Chair of the 2008 Western Regional ACS meeting. Past Chair of the Southern Nevada Local Section and the Agrochemicals Division.
Paul F. Vartanian 2014 Chevron Oronite Company (Retired)
Contribution to the science/profession: Recognized for being a formulator of lubricant products and additives that provided excellent performance for the customer and value to his employer.
Contribution to the ACS community: Involved in many of the activities of the California Local Section, working to bring value to its members.
Marinda Li Wu 2015 Science is Fun! (Retired)
Contribution to the science/profession: Recognized for leading early research efforts on recycling plastics and promoting partnerships between communities, industry, government, and schools to raise awareness of the importance of recycling plastics for environmental sustainability.
Contribution to the ACS community: Served as President of the ACS to champion diversity and inclusivity in chemical sciences and promote partnering with STEM efforts around the world.
Elaine S. Yamaguchi 2010 Chevron Oronite Company
Dr. Yamaguchi was born and raised in Fresno, California, until she went off to Brandeis University for her undergraduate training in chemistry. She then studied for her doctorate degree in organic chemistry at Yale University, graduating in 1976. Her next adventure consisted of a 34-year career at
Chevron, in Richmond, California, where she practiced organic synthesis of wear inhibitor molecules used in lubricating oils, surface analysis with different spectroscopies, and finally, tribology. Early in her career, she met the late Dr. Alan Nixon, the founder of SEED. With his encouragement, and her longtime co-coordinator, the late Dr. Glenn Fuller, she grew the CA Section SEED program from 1 student to 49 students in the recently completed 2015 program. This growth in the local section SEED program required the establishment of strong partnerships with chemistry teachers and their students, mentors and their worksites, donors, and even other local sections who wanted to be part of the CA Section SEED program.
In 2014, new partnerships were formed with a high school videographer, a video editor, and an audio engineer to make a SEED recruiting video for the 2015 program. Dr. Yamaguchi acted as the Director, and a 6-minute SEED recruiting video was sent to the chemistry teachers in the West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD), where it has been more difficult to recruit SEED students for the CA Section’s 9-week SEED program. This video resulted in new teachers/schools participating in the 2015 program.
She has been a Councilor for the CA Section since 1990 and currently serves as Chair of the SEED committee and co-Chair of the Women Chemists Committee. She is also on the Local Section Activities Committee’s Grants and Awards Subcommittee. Dr. Yamaguchi is a Fellow of the ACS and the Society for Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers, for which she is an Associate Editor of Tribology Transactions.
Wallace H. Yokoyama 2021 United States Department of Agriculture
Contribution to the science/profession: Recognized for research on the impact of food components,
such as soluble fiber and polyphenols, on diseases related to fat metabolism, such as cardiovascular
disease and diabetes.
Contribution to the ACS community: Recognized for leadership in the Agricultural and Food
Chemistry Division and the California Section, and for service to Project SEED, including mentoring
students.