In 1884, Carlos Montezuma earned his B.S. in chemistry and became the first Native American to graduate from the University of Illinois. He went on to become one of the first Native Americans to earn a medical degree.
Spotlights
Spray whip cream or “Instantwhip” was invented at the University of Illinois during the depression by Charles Getz, a graduate student in the Chemistry Department and student of Professor George Frederick Smith. Getz found that milk would foam if pressurized carbon dioxide (CO2) was forced into it...
H.N. Cheng (PhD, '74, Gutowsky) is retired as a research chemist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service based in New Orleans, but continues to serve as a collaborator and conduct research. In 2021, he served as President of the American Chemical Society and is one...
Since 1900, 26 alumni or faculty members from Chemistry at Illinois have served as president of The American Chemical Society (ACS), which was founded in 1876 and is one of the world’s largest scientific organizations.
Professor Christina White talks about movies, sports, inspiration and C-H bonds in a Dec. 13, 2019, feature in Chemistry World. White, William H. and Janet G. Lycan Professor...
Originally from Central Mexico, Professor Joaquín Rodríguez-López grew up in Monterrey, the third-largest city in Mexico, famous for its industrial centers and mountains. He attended Tecnológico de Monterrey, one of the most prestigious institutions in Mexico, widely known for innovation and...
An award-winning researcher and pioneer in the synthesis and use of inorganic nanocrystals as probes of biological systems, professor Catherine J. Murphy has also served as Head of the Department of Chemistry at Illinois since June 2020 when she became the first woman to lead the department in its...
As a research scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Maryland, Tina Huang had the opportunity to mentor college interns and high school students. “I really enjoyed that teaching aspect of explaining things,” Huang said. The experience eventually inspired her to accept...
Ruth Eliza Okey, first woman PhD graduate in the Department of Chemistry at Illinois In the early 1900s, Ruth Eliza Okey attended Monmouth College in Monmouth, Ohio, to major in chemistry, “because she liked it.” She also majored in German, because she was told “no woman could...
Elizabeth P. Rogers, a former Department of Chemistry faculty member who retired in 1988 after 25 years of teaching general chemistry courses, has died at the age of 100.
Professor Andrzej Wieckowski was born in Łódź, Poland, on February 22, 1945, the son of Andrzej and Halina (Motylewska) Wieckowski. He obtained his M.Sc. (1968), Ph.D. (1972), and D.Sc. (1981) degrees from the University of Warsaw, Poland; his Ph.D. degree was carried out under the direction of...
Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, Bill Pirkle grew up on a farm, and built model airplanes to fly them competitively even into later years after he had started his career in science. Bill received his B.S. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1958, and his Ph.D. from the University of...
James R. Eiszner Endowed Chair in chemistry and Professor of Physics and Center for Biophysics and quantitative Biology Professor Gruebele received his BS degree in 1984, and his PhD in 1988 from the University of California at Berkeley. After working as a postdoctoral fellow at the California...
Professor Andrew A. Gewirth received his AB from Princeton University in 1981 and his PhD from Stanford University in 1987. He joined the Illinois faculty in 1988 after postdoctoral work at the University of Texas, Austin. Research in his group focuses on the structure and reactivity of surfaces...
Professor Yankwich was internationally recognized for his contributions to three fields of scientific research: the chemical effects of nuclear transformations, the application of radiocarbon tracers to the elucidation of chemical reaction mechanisms, and isotope mass effects on chemical reaction...
Gregorio Weber's research career, spanning more than half a century, was characterized by an unbroken chain of highly original and important contributions to fluorescence spectroscopy and protein chemistry. As a result of his investigations employing the fluorescence techniques in conjunction with...
G. Frederick Smith, as he was more generally known, was born in Lucasville, Ohio, and raised in Columbus, Ohio. Smith attended the University of Michigan, and received his BS, MS and PhD (1922) degrees, the PhD obtained under H. H. Willard in analytical chemistry. He joined the faculty of the...
When William Rose was 19 he started as a graduate student in the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale. Four years later, in 1911, he finished his PhD with L. B. Mendel, finishing a series of studies on the origin of creatine and creatinine. Rose served in several academic posts before accepting a...
Worth Huff Rodebush was born on a farm near Selden, Kansas in 1887. As his biographers stated, "The child of a frontier, rural society which had little interest in pure science, he became part of the scholarly community which developed modern physical chemistry." Rodebush received his PhD in 1917...
Kenneth L. Rinehart, a chemistry professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who was internationally known for his research on organic compounds involved in biological activity, died June 13, 2005 at his Urbana home after a long illness. He was 76. Rinehart’s research led to the...
Samuel W. Parr was born in Granville, Illinois, and graduated with a BS from the University of Illinois in 1884. He spent a year in graduate work at Cornell University, from which he received an MS degree in 1885. He held various academic posts until he joined the faculty at the University of...
Arthur W. Palmer was born in London, England in 1861. He obtained a BS in chemistry at the University of Illinois in 1883 and an ScD in chemistry from Harvard in 1886. He then spent a year in Germany, studying first with Victor Meyer and then with August Hofmann. While in Berlin with Hofmann he...
William Albert Noyes was born on November 6, 1857, on a farm near Independence, Iowa, the youngest son of Spencer W. Noyes and Mary Noyes. In 1875 he entered Grinnell College, where he enrolled in classical studies, reading chemistry on the side, teaching full-time in country schools during the...
Timothy Alan Nieman was born on December 31, 1948 in Mount Healthy, Ohio, the son of Orville and Emma Nieman. He was a member of Boy Scout Troop 275 in Mount Healthy, where he earned Life Scout rank and the God and Country Award. After receiving a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Purdue...
by Dr. R S. Juvet, Professor of Chemistry Emeritus, ASU Professor Emeritus Therald Moeller, past Chairman of the Department of Chemistry at ASU, died November 24 in Broken Arrow, OK, at the age of 84. During the 45 years Professor Moeller was active in teaching and research, he guided...
