Author Archives: edrick

IZC’19 Announcement


 
On behalf of the Local Orga­niz­ing Com­mit­tee I invite you to attend 19th Inter­na­tion­al Zeo­lite Con­fer­ence to be held in Perth, West­ern Aus­tralia 7–12 July 2019, at Crown Perth.

West­ern Aus­tralia is a resource rich state and Perth is the per­fect city to host IZC’19. The pro­gram for­mat will be sim­i­lar to pre­vi­ous con­fer­ences, how­ev­er the com­mit­tee plan to com­ple­ment your vis­it with field trips to mine sites and pro­cess­ing plants both in West­ern Aus­tralia and also on the east­ern sea board where many del­e­gates may wish to enter from.

Perth is a vibrant cos­mopoli­tan city that con­tin­ues to grow and thrive and only less than 2 hours’ dri­ve either north or south we have con­trast­ing land­scapes that demon­strates the nat­ur­al beau­ty of West­ern Aus­tralia. We look for­ward to host­ing you in July 2019 and encour­age you to make the most of this oppor­tu­ni­ty by tak­ing the time while here to vis­it many oth­er parts of this great coun­try, the parts that you have always want­ed to visit.
 
Prof Moses Olu­dayo Tade
Chair Local Organ­is­ing Com­mit­tee, IZC’19
Deputy Pro Vice Chan­cel­lor, Fac­ul­ty of Sci­ence and Engineering,
Curtin Uni­ver­si­ty, Perth, West­ern Australia

Enrique Iglesia is the recipient of the 2019 Michel Boudart Award for the Advancement of Catalysis

We are pleased to announce that Pro­fes­sor Enrique Igle­sia of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley is the recip­i­ent of the 2019 Michel Boudart Award for the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. The award is pre­sent­ed joint­ly by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NACS) and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (EFCATS). The award is sup­port­ed by the Hal­dor Top­søe Com­pa­ny and is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd-num­bered years. Pro­fes­sor Igle­sia will give ple­nary lec­tures at the 2019 NACS and EFCATS meet­ings. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $6,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2019 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM26 in Chicago). 

The Michel Boudart Award rec­og­nizes and encour­ages indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions to the elu­ci­da­tion of the mech­a­nism and active sites involved in cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na and to the devel­op­ment of new meth­ods or con­cepts that advance the under­stand­ing and/or prac­tice of het­ero­ge­neous catalysis.

Pro­fes­sor Enrique Igle­sia and his research group have advanced the design, syn­the­sis, and struc­tur­al and mech­a­nis­tic char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of sol­id cat­a­lysts for chem­i­cal reac­tions involved in the pro­duc­tion, con­ver­sion, and use of ener­gy car­ri­ers, in sus­tain­able syn­the­ses of chem­i­cals and inter­me­di­ates, and in the pro­tec­tion of the envi­ron­ment. These advances exploit nov­el pro­to­cols for the syn­the­sis of well-defined nanos­truc­tures and iso­lat­ed uni­form sites with­in porous solids, as well as tech­niques that probe the local struc­ture and atom­ic con­nec­tiv­i­ty in these mate­ri­als, in most instances as cat­alyt­ic turnovers occur. His research approach, in the spir­it and teach­ings of his men­tor, Pro­fes­sor Michel Boudart, is under­pinned by chem­i­cal kinet­ics, spec­tro­scop­ic probes, ther­mo­dy­nam­ic cycles, tran­si­tion state the­o­ry, and sta­tis­ti­cal mechan­ics and quan­tum meth­ods for the pur­pose of elu­ci­dat­ing the essen­tial fea­tures of the rel­e­vant sur­face chem­istry and the nature of the required active sites. His most recent work has brought togeth­er sol­va­tion effects on reac­tiv­i­ty and selec­tiv­i­ty induced by con­fine­ment and by dense phas­es, whether liq­uid or adsorbed lay­ers, into a uni­fy­ing con­cep­tu­al frame­work. In doing so, these stud­ies have led to the more accu­rate and explic­it iso­la­tion of the respec­tive effects of the bind­ing point and the reac­tion envi­ron­ment on tran­si­tion state sta­bil­i­ty, thus allow­ing the def­i­n­i­tion of more com­plete descrip­tors of site reac­tiv­i­ty in oxi­da­tion and acid catal­y­sis. The rel­e­vance of his research to the prac­tice of catal­y­sis is evi­dent from his many patents, sev­er­al of which have enabled improve­ments in cat­alyt­ic process­es for the con­ver­sion of nat­ur­al gas and oxy­genates to fuels and chem­i­cals as well as the broad­er appli­ca­tion of zeo­types in chem­i­cal syn­the­ses and envi­ron­men­tal control.
 
Jing­guang Chen
Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society

Call for Nominations of the 2019 Herman Pines Award in Catalysis

Sponsored by UOP and the Catalysis Club of Chicago

Her­man Pines

The Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go is solic­it­ing nom­i­na­tions for the Her­man Pines Award for out­stand­ing research in the field of catal­y­sis. Her­man Pines was an out­stand­ing research sci­en­tist in both indus­try and acad­e­mia, and his work rev­o­lu­tion­ized the gen­er­al under­stand­ing of organ­ic chem­istry, par­tic­u­lar­ly the chem­istry of hydro­car­bons inter­act­ing with strong acids. The Award in his hon­or is co-spon­sored by UOP, where Her­man Pines began his indus­tri­al career in 1930 and amassed 145 US patents, and by the Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go of which Her­man Pines was a found­ing mem­ber while at North­west­ern University.

The Award will be pre­sent­ed at the 2019 Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go Spring Sym­po­sium on April 16, 2019 and con­sists of a plaque, a cash award of $1,000 and reim­burse­ment for trav­el and lodg­ing as a ple­nary speak­er at the Spring Symposium.

The nom­i­nee must meet the fol­low­ing criteria:

  • Sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ments in catal­y­sis research over the past five years
  • For year 2019, the award will be giv­en to a mem­ber of acad­e­mia or nation­al laboratory
  • Active mem­ber in catal­y­sis community
  • A res­i­dent of North America.

Dead­line for nom­i­na­tion is Jan­u­ary 18, 2019. Nom­i­na­tions should describe the spe­cif­ic work for which the nom­i­nee should be rec­og­nized. A com­plete cur­ricu­lum vitae with letter(s) of sup­port for the nom­i­nee must be includ­ed in the nom­i­na­tion, togeth­er with the descrip­tion of work. Let­ters of nom­i­na­tion and sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion must be sent by Jan­u­ary 18, 2019 as a sin­gle PDF doc­u­ment to:

 
Chris Nicholas
Pres­i­dent – The Catal­y­sis Club of Chica­go (2018–2019)
Hon­ey­well UOP
25 East Algo­nquin Rd.
Des Plaines, IL 60017
Christopher.Nicholas@uop.com

 

Previous recipients of the Herman Pines Award

 
1999 Prof. Harold Kung, North­west­ern University
2000 Dr. John Mon­nier, East­man Chem­i­cal Company
2001 Prof. Lan­ny Schmidt, Uni­ver­si­ty of Minnesota
2002 Dr. James Brazdil, BP
2003 Prof. James Dumesic, Uni­ver­si­ty of Wisconsin
2004 Dr. Alak Bhat­tacharyya, BP
2005 Prof. Israel Wachs, Lehigh University
2006 Dr. Jeff Miller, BP
2007 Prof. Chun­shan Song, Penn­syl­va­nia State University
2008 Dr. Alek­sey Yez­erets, Cum­mins Inc.
2009 Prof. Tobin Marks, North­west­ern University
2010 Dr. James Rekoske, UOP
2011 Prof. Jing­guang Chen, Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware
2012 Dr. Stu­art Soled, ExxonMobil
2013 Prof. W. Nicholas Del­gass, Pur­due University
2014 Dr. Haiy­ing Chen, John­son Matthey
2015 Prof. Fabio H. Ribeiro, Pur­due University
2016 Dr. Deng-Yang Jan, UOP-Honeywell
2017 Prof. Peter Stair – Northwestern
2018 Dr. Jerzy Klosin – Dow Chemicals

Javier Pérez-Ramírez is the recipient of the 2019 Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Javier Pérez-Ramírez of ETH Zurich is the recip­i­ent of the 2019 Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis, spon­sored by W. R. Grace & Co. This prize is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd-num­bered years. The award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2019 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. Dr. Pérez-Ramírez will present a Ple­nary Lec­ture at the 2019 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM26, in Chicago).

The Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis rec­og­nizes and encour­ages indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on dis­cov­ery and under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na, pro­pos­al of cat­alyt­ic reac­tion mech­a­nisms and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of and descrip­tion of cat­alyt­ic sites and species.

The 2019 award rec­og­nizes Pro­fes­sor Pérez-Ramírez for sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the design of cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als and process con­cepts to solve ener­gy, resource, and envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges of soci­ety at large. He has devel­oped cat­a­lysts that enable pio­neer­ing selec­tive routes for CO2 hydro­gena­tion to methanol and halo­gen-medi­at­ed func­tion­al­iza­tion of nat­ur­al gas com­po­nents, as well as for con­ver­sion of renew­ables to chem­i­cal build­ing blocks. He has advanced tech­niques for nanos­truc­tur­ing of noble met­als in the form of defined ensem­bles or sin­gle atoms. This has enabled key sus­tain­abil­i­ty tar­gets, such as the avoid­ance of harm­ful mod­i­fiers for liq­uid-phase alkyne hydro­gena­tion. The thread of his research com­bines cre­ative dis­cov­ery with advanced struc­tur­al and mech­a­nis­tic under­stand­ing, empha­siz­ing the bridge between the mol­e­c­u­lar lev­el and appli­ca­tion at the tech­ni­cal scale.
 
Citation:
For the design of inno­v­a­tive cat­alyt­ic process­es to address ener­gy, resource, and envi­ron­men­tal challenges.
 
Christo­pher W. Jones
VP, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society

Call for Nominations of the 2018 Great Plains Catalysis Society Award

The Great Plains Catal­y­sis Soci­ety seeks nom­i­na­tions for the 2018 Great Plains Catal­y­sis Soci­ety Award. This will be the first time the Award is giv­en by the Soci­ety. The Award will be pre­sent­ed at the 2nd Annu­al Sym­po­sium of the Great Plains Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, to be held on April 12, 2019 at the Phillips 66 Research Cen­ter in Bartlesville, OK. The Award win­ner will give a ple­nary lec­ture at the Symposium.

The Award will be giv­en to an indi­vid­ual, prefer­ably from the Great Plains area, who has made an out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the advance­ment of catal­y­sis. Such advance­ment can be sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, or in orga­ni­za­tion lead­er­ship. The Award will be pre­sent­ed at the annu­al sym­po­sium and con­sists of a scroll and memen­to, reim­burse­ment for trav­el and lodg­ing expens­es to the annu­al Sym­po­sium, and a cash prize. Nom­i­nees must con­firm in advance their atten­dance at the annu­al Sym­po­sium and their intent to deliv­er a ple­nary lec­ture if cho­sen to receive the Award.

A full nom­i­na­tion pack­age must be lim­it­ed to 10 pages and should include the following:

  1. Name, occu­pa­tion­al address, phone, and e‑mail of the nom­i­na­tor, who must be a mem­ber in good stand­ing of the Society
  2. Name, occu­pa­tion­al address, phone, and e‑mail of the nominee
  3. Nominee’s short-form cur­ricu­lum vitae
  4. One let­ter of nom­i­na­tion from the nominator
  5. One to two let­ters of support
  6. An award cita­tion of 200–400 words that could be used for publicity

The nom­i­na­tion pack­age must be received by Jan­u­ary 8, 2019 and should be sent to:
 
Alan All­geier
Learned Hall
Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas
1530 W. 15th St
Lawrence, KS 66045
alan.allgeier@ku.edu
 
It is the intent of the Soci­ety to noti­fy the Award win­ner by March 1, 2019.

Hai-Ying Chen is the recipient of the 2019 Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catalysis

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Hai-Ying Chen of John­son Matthey is the recip­i­ent of the 2019 Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis spon­sored by Clariant. 

The Eugene J. Houdry Award in Applied Catal­y­sis rec­og­nizes and encour­ages indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on the devel­op­ment of new and improved cat­a­lysts and process­es rep­re­sent­ing out­stand­ing advances in their use­ful appli­ca­tion. It is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd-num­bered years. The award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2019 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM26) in Chica­go. Dr. Chen will also present a Ple­nary Lec­ture at the 2019 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety in recog­ni­tion of this honor. 

Dr. Chen is rec­og­nized for his out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to advanc­ing the capa­bil­i­ties of cat­alyt­ic con­vert­ers for auto­mo­tive exhaust emis­sion con­trol – a field pio­neered by Eugene J. Houdry more than 60 years ago. Dr. Chen and his team at John­son Matthey have devel­oped and indus­tri­al­ized many inno­v­a­tive cat­a­lyst tech­nolo­gies for clean­ing air pol­lu­tants from exhaust emis­sions. These include the devel­op­ment of NOx adsor­ber cat­a­lysts for diesel pick­up trucks to meet strin­gent US EPA 2010 emis­sion stan­dards in 2007; the dis­cov­ery and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of a group of small-pore zeo­lite sup­port­ed Cu cat­a­lysts for the selec­tive cat­alyt­ic reduc­tion of NOx for heavy-duty diesel trucks to meet low NOx emis­sion reg­u­la­tions in 2010; and the most recent inven­tion of Pd-zeo­lite based diesel cold start con­cept cat­a­lysts that help fuel-effi­cient vehi­cles meet stricter future envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions. Mil­lions of emis­sion con­trol cat­a­lysts and sys­tems that con­tain the tech­nolo­gies devel­oped by Dr. Chen and his team have been installed on vehi­cles. This has result­ed in mil­lions of tons of reduc­tion in air pol­lu­tants, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly ben­e­fits our envi­ron­ment and society. 

Dr. Chen received his Ph.D. in Chem­istry from Fudan Uni­ver­si­ty, Shang­hai, Chi­na. He con­duct­ed post­doc­tor­al research at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, Evanston, Illi­nois. He has pub­lished more than 60 tech­ni­cal papers and holds more than 140 grant­ed patents in var­i­ous juris­dic­tions around the world.
 
Citation:
For out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to advance­ments in cat­a­lyst tech­nolo­gies and sci­ence for diesel exhaust emis­sion control. 

In Memoriam: Burtron H. “Burt” Davis (1934 ‑2018)

It is with great sad­ness that I write to share with you the pass­ing of Burtron H. “Burt” Davis on Sep­tem­ber 28th.

Burt Davis was an out­stand­ing sci­en­tist and intel­lect hold­ing pro­lif­ic schol­ar­ly track records, and con­stant source of humor­ous tales for decades. He had a hob­by of col­lect­ing research on the great­est sci­en­tists of our time, includ­ing his men­tor Dr. Paul Emmett. He is irre­place­able, and will be missed by many of us. Please keep his fam­i­ly, friends, and col­leagues in your thoughts.

Burt Davis, an inves­ti­ga­tor, Asso­ciate Direc­tor and Inter­im Direc­tor of Cen­ter for Applied Ener­gy Research, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ken­tucky, enjoyed a high­ly suc­cess­ful career of research and schol­ar­ship, being wide­ly rec­og­nized as the ulti­mate author­i­ty on Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch syn­the­sis. He held numer­ous offices and mem­ber­ships in sev­er­al pro­fes­sion­al soci­eties, includ­ing the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety (ACS), the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, TriS­tate Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Engi­neers, and the Mate­ri­als Research Soci­ety. He authored/­co-authored over 850 pub­li­ca­tions and received four Else­vi­er most-cit­ed author awards. Burt was award­ed the pres­ti­gious Hen­ry H. Storch Award in Fuel Sci­ence in 2002 by ACS for his sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions in catal­y­sis, Fischer−Tropsch syn­the­sis, and coal con­ver­sion research. In 2011, he became an ACS Fel­low. In 2013, he earned ACS’s Ener­gy and Fuels Division’s Dis­tin­guished Researcher Award in Petro­le­um Chem­istry. In 2014, he was pre­sent­ed to the Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice award by the NACS, and the “Dis­tin­guished West Vir­gin­ian Award” by then-Gov­er­nor Earl Ray Tomblin.

Burt Davis received his B.S. degree in chem­istry from West Vir­ginia Uni­ver­si­ty, M.S. from St. Joseph’s Uni­ver­si­ty while he was work­ing at Atlantic Refin­ing, and PhD from Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da. He worked under Paul Emmett as a post-doc­tor­ate researcher on catal­y­sis at the John Hop­kins University. 

He worked at Mobil for four years, where he dis­cov­ered a plat­inum-10 cat­a­lyst for con­vert­ing gaso­line from low-octane to high-octane. After sev­en years of teach­ing at Potomac State Col­lege as an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Chem­istry, Davis fol­lowed his great pas­sion for research, and start­ed work­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kentucky’s Cen­ter for Applied Ener­gy where he was respon­si­ble for catal­y­sis, Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch Syn­the­sis and direct coal liq­ue­fac­tion research. He cre­at­ed a pro­gram that involved both aca­d­e­m­ic research and coop­er­a­tive research with indus­try. He has devel­oped a lab­o­ra­to­ry with exten­sive capa­bil­i­ty in use the of radioac­tive and sta­ble iso­topes in reac­tion mech­a­nism stud­ies and mate­ri­als char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and devel­oped research pro­grams in Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch Syn­the­sis, sur­face sci­ence stud­ies, het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, mate­ri­als sci­ence, organ­ic analy­sis, 1/4 ton per day direct coal liq­ue­fac­tion pilot plant oper­a­tion, liq­ue­fac­tion mech­a­nis­tic stud­ies, clean gaso­line reform­ing with superacid cat­a­lysts, and upgrad­ing naphthas.

A Funer­al ser­vice for Burt Davis will be held on Tues­day, Octo­ber 2, 2018 at John­son’s Funer­al Home at 4:00 pm. Funer­al Ser­vice Infor­ma­tion: www.johnsonsfuneralhome.com/book-of-memories/3619109/Davis-Burtron/service-details.php

Alexis T. Bell is the recipient of the 2018 NACS Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Catalysis

I am pleased to announce that Prof. Alex­is T. Bell is the recip­i­ent of the 2018 NACS Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. The award is co-spon­sored by Exxon­Mo­bil and Clari­ant. It is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in even-num­bered years. The award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. The plaque will be pre­sent­ed dur­ing the clos­ing ban­quet cer­e­monies at the 2019 North Amer­i­can Meet­ing of the Catal­y­sis Society.

The NACS Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis is giv­en to a per­son who has advanced cat­alyt­ic chem­istry or engi­neer­ing by sig­nif­i­cant ser­vice to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty in addi­tion to their tech­ni­cal accomplishments.

Alex Bell’s dis­tin­guished ser­vice to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty has sig­nif­i­cant­ly advanced the field through a wide vari­ety of lead­er­ship posi­tions. He has been the Edi­tor in Chief of Catal­y­sis Reviews – Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing and Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Sci­ence. In addi­tion, Alex has tak­en lead­er­ship roles that have great­ly impact­ed catal­y­sis. He was appoint­ed as Chair of a Pan­el on New Direc­tions in Cat­alyt­ic Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy for the Nation­al Research Coun­cil from 1989–91. He orga­nized a work­shop on the sub­ject and led the writ­ing of a report enti­tled Catal­y­sis Looks to the Future. Oral pre­sen­ta­tions based on the report were made to House and Sen­ate com­mit­tees deal­ing with sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. The find­ings of the report served to launch and strength­en research pro­grams in catal­y­sis in many parts of the world and pro­vid­ed direc­tion and sup­port­ing infor­ma­tion for many research pro­pos­als sub­mit­ted in the US. Alex has also served in lead­er­ship posi­tions for work­shops designed to help shape DOE pro­grams that impact catal­y­sis. In addi­tion to these spe­cial assign­ments Alex has also tak­en on lead­er­ship roles in the NACS and inter­na­tion­al catal­y­sis soci­eties. Alex estab­lished this record of ser­vice while advanc­ing the knowl­edge of catal­y­sis with the pub­li­ca­tion of over 700 tech­ni­cal pub­li­ca­tions, with an h‑index of 111. He has estab­lished lead­er­ship roles in mech­a­nis­tic stud­ies using vibra­tional spec­tro­scopies and kinet­ic analy­sis for a vari­ety of cat­alyt­ic reac­tions, and appli­ca­tions to catal­y­sis of the­o­ry rang­ing from mol­e­c­u­lar dynam­ics to bond order con­ser­va­tion meth­ods to den­si­ty func­tion­al the­o­ry. This most impres­sive body of work has been wide­ly rec­og­nized, includ­ing elec­tion to the Nation­al Acad­e­mies of both Engi­neer­ing and Science.

The time required for these tasks was sub­stan­tial, but the ben­e­fits to the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty were huge and made pos­si­ble only by Alex’s unique com­bi­na­tion of skill and com­mit­ment. The com­mu­ni­ty is very thank­ful to Alex for these impor­tant contributions.
 
Christo­pher W. Jones
VP, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society

In Memoriam: Frank S. Stone (1925–2018)

Frank Stone’s death on March 5th deprived the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty of an elder states­man, famed for stud­ies of catal­y­sis and sol­id-state chem­istry. Born in 1925 in Bris­tol, Eng­land, and edu­cat­ed at Queen Elizabeth’s Hos­pi­tal School, Bris­tol, he excelled in Clas­sics and Sci­ences, but pre­ferred the lat­ter, study­ing Chem­istry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol; grad­u­at­ing with first class hon­ours in 1945.

He under­took post­grad­u­ate research with Pro­fes­sor W. E. Gar­ner, link­ing the cat­alyt­ic activ­i­ties of bina­ry inor­gan­ic oxides with their semi-con­duct­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics. There­after, he pro­ceed­ed to post-doc­tor­al stud­ies in pho­to­chem­istry at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, USA, with the dis­tin­guished phys­i­cal chemist, Hugh S. Tay­lor. Return­ing to Bris­tol, he inves­ti­gat­ed het­ero­ge­neous cat­alyt­ic reac­tions through adsorp­tion calorime­try. The impor­tance of the “elec­tron­ic fac­tor” to het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis led Stone to dop­ing bina­ry oxides with the alter-valent ions, and to mea­sur­ing the mag­net­ic prop­er­ties of ternary oxides. Endur­ing asso­ci­a­tions were estab­lished with Ital­ian and Span­ish research groups; notably with Alessan­dro Cimi­no, a con­tem­po­rary at Prince­ton, at the Uni­ver­si­ties of Peru­gia and Rome, assess­ing spe­cif­ic cat­alyt­ic activ­i­ties of iso­lat­ed sur­face ion­ic sites; and with co-work­ers of J. F. Gar­cia de la Ban­da (CSIC, Madrid), who worked pre­vi­ous­ly with Gar­ner, to study the crack­ing of hydro­car­bons on tran­si­tion met­al-doped zeo­lites. Between 1955–65, Frank Stone pio­neered research on het­ero­ge­neous pho­to­catal­y­sis on fine­ly-divid­ed oxides, sol­id-state reac­tions for spinel for­ma­tion, and adsorp­tion on sup­port­ed metal­lic particles.

He became Euro­pean Edi­tor of the Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis in 1970, a task at which he excelled for 26 years, in which his lit­er­ary acu­men and facil­i­ty with for­eign lan­guages earned him huge respect, espe­cial­ly from non-Eng­lish-speak­ing authors, who were grate­ful to him for his tact­ful sug­ges­tions for improv­ing manuscripts.

In 1972 Frank Stone became Pro­fes­sor of Phys­i­cal Chem­istry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bath, where, with Adri­ano Zecchi­na and Edoar­do Gar­rone of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Turin, he applied UV-Vis­i­ble Dif­fuse Reflectance- and Infra-Red Spec­tro­scopies to oxide sur­faces of alka­line-earth ele­ments, iden­ti­fy­ing 3‑, 4‑, and 5‑fold coor­di­nat­ed adsorp­tion sites, and reveal­ing a pink oligomer­ic form of adsorbed car­bon monox­ide. In lat­er years he held the posi­tion of Pro-Vice-Chan­cel­lor. Frank Stone was an out­stand­ing lec­tur­er. He authored more than 120 sci­en­tif­ic papers; many have with­stood the “wear of time”. He was a found­ing- com­mit­tee mem­ber of the tri­en­ni­al Ride­al Con­fer­ence Series, and was a reg­u­lar attendee until 2011/12.

He met his future wife, Joan, also a stu­dent, in wartime Bris­tol. They became vol­un­teer fire-watch­ers, study­ing by day and ful­fill­ing their night-time duties from the rooftops of the Uni­ver­si­ty build­ings. A fam­i­ly man, who enjoyed gar­den­ing, cycling, and trav­el. He took many camp­ing hol­i­days across Europe, a prac­tice con­tin­ued until late in life and held annu­al sum­mer camps for his research group in the Welsh Moun­tains or on Exmoor. He was a reg­u­lar­ly-attend­ing mem­ber of the Bris­tol Sci­en­tif­ic Soci­ety until short­ly before his death.
 
Roger I. Bickley
Brad­ford, West York­shire, UK 

In Memoriam: Kozo Tanabe (1926–2018)

Pro­fes­sor Kozo Tan­abe passed away on April 24, 2018 at the age of 91.

Kozo Tan­abe was born on May 7, 1926 in Take­da, Oita pre­fec­ture, Japan. He stud­ied Chem­istry at Hokkai­do Uni­ver­si­ty and grad­u­at­ed in 1951. He joined the Research Insti­tute of Catal­y­sis, Hokkai­do Uni­ver­si­ty and received a PhD in 1956. He remained on the fac­ul­ty of the Research Insti­tute of Catal­y­sis and was pro­mot­ed to Pro­fes­sor in 1960. In 1965, he moved to the Depart­ment of Chem­istry at Hokkai­do Uni­ver­si­ty, where he retired to become Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus in 1990.

Pro­fes­sor Tan­abe car­ried out ear­ly sem­i­nal work in acid-base catal­y­sis by solids and dis­cov­ered the essen­tial role of acid-base pairs in con­fer­ring unique reac­tiv­i­ty and selec­tiv­i­ty by sta­bi­liz­ing inter­me­di­ates through con­cert­ed inter­ac­tions. He was a pro­lif­ic and high­ly-cit­ed author with more than 300 research pub­li­ca­tion and 10 books. Among these, the book enti­tled “Sol­id Acids and Bases” set the fun­da­men­tal under­pin­nings for the inter­pre­ta­tion of the reac­tiv­i­ty of oxides and mixed oxides in cat­alyt­ic reac­tions and for the ben­e­fits of an appro­pri­ate bal­ance in strength between the acid and base active centers.

His achieve­ments were rec­og­nized with many dis­tinc­tions, among them sev­er­al awards from the Chem­i­cal Soci­ety and the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Japan and the Japan Insti­tute of Petro­le­um. He was award­ed the Medal with Pur­ple Rib­bon and the Order of the Sacred Trea­sure. Pro­fes­sor Tan­abe served as Pres­i­dent of the Catal­y­sis Soci­ety of Japan and as Vice pres­i­dent of the Chem­i­cal Soci­ety of Japan. His pro­found influ­ence on the field led to the cre­ation of the “Kozo Tan­abe Prize for Acid-Base Catal­y­sis” in his hon­or; this prize is stew­ard­ed by the Sci­en­tif­ic Advi­so­ry Board of the Inter­na­tion­al Acid-Base Catal­y­sis Symposium.

Pro­fes­sor Tan­abe was a teacher and men­tor for many gen­er­a­tions of catal­y­sis sci­en­tists at Hokkai­do Uni­ver­si­ty and in the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty at-large. He is also remem­bered as a hum­ble and gen­tle schol­ar whose vast wis­dom and knowl­edge he was always so will­ing to share.
 
(Pre­pared by Hideshi Hat­tori, Johannes Lercher, and Enrique Igle­sia)