The Willis H. Flygare Memorial fund supports the Flygare Memorial Lectures held each year by the Department of Chemistry in honor of Dr. Willis Flygare.
Willis "Bill" Flygare was a professor of Chemistry at Illinois from 1961 until his death in 1981. During that time he directed more than 30 PhD students. A visionary chemist, he developed a new experimental method involving the molecular Zeeman effect. Utilizing this effect, he measured most of the known molecular quadrupole moments and magnetic susceptibility anisotropies. He developed a highly sensitive microwave spectrometer by combining molecular beams with Fourier transform techniques.
Dr. Flygare was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Following his death in 1981, a special issue of the Journal of Chemical Physics was published in his memory, with 117 articles written by friends and colleagues.