Elections underway

For mem­bers of the NACS resid­ing in North Amer­i­ca, the 2009 Direc­tors-at-Large elec­tion is under­way. For the first time, the NACS is using on-line bal­lot­ing as the only way to cast your vote for Direc­tors-at-Large. Please use the last name and pass­word pro­vid­ed in the first email to gain access to the restrict­ed vot­ing web­site. The link with the address of the vot­ing site will come in a sec­ond email short­ly after the first one. You can cast your vote after receiv­ing both emails. The vot­ing web page will be held open for three weeks until Feb­ru­ary 27th, 2009 at 11:59 PM. Your pass­word will be deac­ti­vat­ed after you record your vote.

Please select up to 4 mem­bers from a slate of 9 can­di­dates. For infor­ma­tion on the can­di­dates run­ning for elec­tion, please vis­it http://nacatsoc.org/nl/2009-DatLCandidates.

Nominations open for Robert Burwell Lectureship In Catalysis

The Robert Bur­well Lec­ture­ship in Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by John­son Matthey Cat­a­lysts Divi­sion and admin­is­tered by The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. It is to be award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd-num­bered years. The award con­sists of a plaque and an hon­o­rar­i­um of $5,000. An addi­tion­al $4,500 is avail­able to cov­er trav­el­ling expens­es in North Amer­i­ca. The awardee is expect­ed to lec­ture at many of the local catal­y­sis clubs.

The award is giv­en in recog­ni­tion of sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions to one or more areas in the field of catal­y­sis with empha­sis on dis­cov­ery and under­stand­ing of cat­alyt­ic phe­nom­e­na, cat­alyt­ic reac­tion mech­a­nisms and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and descrip­tion of cat­alyt­ic sites and species. The Awardee will be select­ed on the basis of his/her con­tri­bu­tions to the cat­alyt­ic lit­er­a­ture and the cur­rent time­li­ness of these research con­tri­bu­tions. The recip­i­ent may be invit­ed to (1) vis­it and lec­ture to each of the affil­i­at­ed Clubs/Societies with which mutu­al­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry arrange­ments can be made and (2) pre­pare a review paper(s) for pub­li­ca­tion cov­er­ing these lec­tures. Pub­li­ca­tion will be in an appro­pri­ate peri­od­i­cal.

Selec­tion of the Award win­ner will be made by a com­mit­tee of renowned sci­en­tists and engi­neers appoint­ed by the Pres­i­dent of The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. Selec­tion shall be made with­out regard for age, sex, nation­al­i­ty or affil­i­a­tion. Posthu­mous awards will be made only when knowl­edge of the awardee’s death is received after announce­ment of the Award Com­mit­tee’s deci­sion. Nom­i­na­tion pack­ages should indi­cate the nom­i­nee’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions, accom­plish­ments with CV, a nom­i­nat­ing let­ter, no more than two sec­ond­ing let­ters and a biog­ra­phy of the nom­i­nee. A crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the sig­nif­i­cance of can­di­date’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions should be made as well as a state­ment of the par­tic­u­lar contribution(s) on which the nom­i­na­tion is based. Nom­i­na­tion pack­ages for the Award must be received by on March 1 2009 in one com­plete pack­age.

All nom­i­na­tion pack­ages (one ELECTRONIC COPY) for the Bur­well Award should be sent to John Armor, Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety at nacatsoc@verizon.net . Receipt of any nom­i­na­tion, will be con­firmed by an email mes­sage sent to each nom­i­na­tor.

Announcement of Tanabe Prize Winner at ABC‑6

The inter­na­tion­al Acid Base Catal­y­sis (ABC) group is proud to announce the award­ing of the first Tan­abe Prize for Acid-Base Catal­y­sis to Pro­fes­sor Enrique Igle­sia of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley.

The Tan­abe Prize for Acid Base Catal­y­sis is admin­is­tered by the Inter­na­tion­al Acid-Base Catal­y­sis (ABC) Group and spon­sored this year by the Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing Co. It is named to hon­or the lega­cy and accom­plish­ments of Pro­fes­sor Kozo Tan­abe, who pio­neered many of the mod­ern con­cepts in acid-base chem­istry. The prize will be pre­sent­ed at the ABC‑6 Con­fer­ence in Gen­o­va in May 2009 (6th world con­gress on Catal­y­sis by Acids and Bases, Gen­o­va, Italy, 10–14 May 2009; http://www.catalisidichep.unige.it/ABC‑6.htm). The award con­sists of a plaque, an hon­o­rar­i­um, and trav­el expens­es to attend the meet­ing and present a ple­nary lec­ture. The Tan­abe prize rec­og­nizes sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions to the field of acid and/or base catal­y­sis. It may be pre­sent­ed to either a young per­son who has demon­strat­ed unusu­al promise ear­ly in his/her career or to an indi­vid­ual of less than 56 years of age at the time of the ABC con­fer­ence at any career stage, who has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the area with­in the six years pre­ced­ing the award.

Enrique is being rec­og­nized for his pio­neer­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the design and under­stand­ing of acid sites with­in spe­cif­ic struc­tures and for his dis­cov­ery of a new acid catal­y­sis route with impor­tant indus­tri­al rel­e­vance, in par­tic­u­lar for two of his more recent stud­ies, the first on shape selec­tive car­bony­la­tion and the sec­ond on het­eropoly com­pounds.

His recent sem­i­nal dis­cov­ery of shape selec­tive car­bony­la­tion with­in micro­p­orous zeo­lites, in which unprece­dent­ed speci­fici­ty for car­bony­la­tion reac­tions (very high rates of car­bony­la­tion along with selec­tiv­i­ties to methyl acetate greater than 99% achieved for DME (dimethylether) car­bony­la­tion). This sig­nif­i­cant increase in cat­alyt­ic per­for­mance was shown to be the result of the unique struc­tur­al and elec­tron­ic topogra­phies of 8‑member ring chan­nels. These high­ly active and selec­tive zeo­lites are ide­al replace­ments to the cost­ly, high­ly tox­ic and cor­ro­sive iodide-pro­mot­ed organometal­lic cat­a­lysts that are cur­rent­ly used in indus­try.

Also with­in the last five years Enrique has made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the area of het­eropoly com­pounds as sol­id acids. Fol­low­ing the orig­i­nal con­tri­bu­tions of Pro­fes­sor Mis­ono, Enrique for­mu­lat­ed exact com­po­si­tion-func­tion rela­tions with pre­dic­tive val­ue by address­ing the reac­tiv­i­ty of POM mate­ri­als with vary­ing com­po­si­tion and hence, acid strength, and mea­sur­ing the cor­re­spond­ing kinet­ic and ther­mo­dy­nam­ic con­stants for ele­men­tary steps for alka­nol dehy­dra­tion reac­tions. In this work, the ubiq­ui­tous aggre­ga­tion and incom­plete envi­ron­ment depen­dent acces­si­bil­i­ty of POM clus­ters was min­i­mized by dis­pers­ing the POM clus­ters on sup­ports and prob­ing acces­si­bil­i­ty before and dur­ing cat­alyt­ic reac­tions using organ­ic bases of vary­ing polar­i­ty and size. His results, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Pro­fes­sor M. Neurock’s for cal­cu­la­tions using DFT, have led to a quan­ti­ta­tive assess­ment of struc­tur­al and com­po­si­tion­al effects on the intrin­sic reac­tiv­i­ty of Brøn­st­ed acid sites on Keg­gin-type POM mate­ri­als. He showed that the effects of acid strength on the sta­bil­i­ty of cation­ic inter­me­di­ates and tran­si­tion states are par­tial­ly com­pen­sat­ed by the sta­bi­liza­tion of the ion-pair at the tran­si­tion state as acids become weak­er and the anion­ic con­ju­gate base acquires a high­er charge den­si­ty.

Professor Avelino Corma Canos selected for the 2009 Michel Boudart Award

Pro­fes­sor Aveli­no Cor­ma Canos has been select­ed for the 2009 Michel Boudart Award for the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis. The award con­sists of a plaque and a mon­e­tary prize. The 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. The Award is spon­sored by the Hal­dor Top­søe Com­pa­ny and is admin­is­tered joint­ly by the NACS and the EFCATS. More infor­ma­tion on this award and the award process can be found in the Awards fold­er on the NACS home page www.nacatsoc.org. Pro­fes­sor Cor­ma will also be asked to give ple­nary lec­tures at the San Fran­cis­co NAM meet­ing in June 2009 and the EuropaCat 2009 meet­ing in Sala­man­ca, Spain.

Aveli­no Cor­ma has been a research pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­dad Politéc­ni­ca de Valen­cia since 1990 where he found­ed and is direc­tor of the Insti­tu­to de Tec­nolo­gia Quími­ca (UPV-CSIC) at Valen­cia. He is a world class leader in struc­tured nano­ma­te­ri­als and mol­e­c­u­lar sieves as cat­a­lysts, cov­er­ing aspects of syn­the­sis, char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, and reac­tiv­i­ty in acid-base and redox catal­y­sis. He is rec­og­nized wide­ly for his unique abil­i­ty to com­bine state-of-the-art syn­thet­ic pro­to­cols with mod­ern the­o­ret­i­cal and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion meth­ods to design cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als for spe­cif­ic func­tions. Aveli­no has become one of the most pro­lif­ic and ver­sa­tile con­trib­u­tors to the sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. He has pub­lished near­ly 700 schol­ar­ly man­u­scripts in the lead­ing jour­nals of chem­istry and catal­y­sis, and he has been rec­og­nized among the fifty most high­ly cit­ed chemists for the last decade. Remark­ably, he has com­bined these schol­ar­ly con­tri­bu­tions with more than 100 patents cov­er­ing inven­tions of far-reach­ing impact to the indus­tri­al prac­tice of catal­y­sis, many of them licensed to indus­try and some in com­mer­cial prac­tice. In 2006 alone, he received four pres­ti­gious inter­na­tion­al awards in recog­ni­tion of his many and broad fun­da­men­tal and prac­ti­cal con­tri­bu­tions to the field. As one nom­i­na­tor described, “Pro­fes­sor Aveli­no Corma’s … work illus­trates the val­ue of fun­da­men­tal con­cepts in prac­ti­cal dis­cov­er­ies and the need to bring togeth­er exper­i­ment and the­o­ry, char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of struc­ture and func­tion in com­plex inor­gan­ic solids, and indus­try and acad­e­mia as we seek to advance the sci­ence of catal­y­sis.” Anoth­er sup­port­er remarked, he is “one of the inter­na­tion­al­ly pre­em­i­nent schol­ars in the field of catal­y­sis today. His work has had immense impact on the sci­ence of this field and has also led to a num­ber of sig­nif­i­cant tech­ni­cal appli­ca­tions, a very rare accom­plish­ment for any aca­d­e­m­ic inves­ti­ga­tor.”

Avelino’s grasp of con­cepts and of fun­da­men­tal needs has been illus­trat­ed in his recent attempts to syn­the­size and use well defined-sin­gle-iso­lat­ed sites to estab­lish struc­ture-func­tion rela­tions and to estab­lish the con­nec­tions among homo­ge­neous, enzy­mat­ic and het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, a con­cep­tu­al frame­work that put for­ward in a sem­i­nal paper in Catal­y­sis Reviews, 46 (2004) 369 — 417. One of these approach­es involves the selec­tive attach­ment of organometal­lic com­plex­es onto tai­lored sub­strates that act not only as scaf­folds but also as active par­tic­i­pant in the acti­va­tion of reac­tants and in the sta­bi­liza­tion of tran­si­tion states. These mate­ri­als pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments over homo­ge­neous ver­sions of these active com­plex­es through the active par­tic­i­pa­tion of the inor­gan­ic scaf­folds, as shown in some of his recent pub­li­ca­tions, in which these con­cepts have been put into prac­tice (e.g. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 45, 3328 (2006); J. Catal. 224, 170 (2004); Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 46, 1536 (2007); Adv. Synth. Catal. 348, 1283 (2006)).
In anoth­er exam­ple of his many con­tri­bu­tions to catal­y­sis, he and his research group have not only addressed the design of new zeo­lites mate­ri­als for con­ven­tion­al reac­tions of hydro­car­bons, but also dis­cov­ered new chemistries and appli­ca­tions for these mate­ri­als in the syn­the­sis of petro­chem­i­cals, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, and fine chem­i­cals. The ITQ-type mate­ri­als have become ubiq­ui­tous in the lit­er­a­ture; they rep­re­sent new cat­a­lyst com­po­si­tions, cur­rent­ly num­ber­ing about 50 and con­sist­ing most­ly of micro­p­orous solids, all dis­cov­ered with­in the Cor­ma research group. His nov­el cat­a­lysts for paraf­fin iso­mer­iza­tion are wide­ly used in prac­tice because of their unprece­dent­ed sul­fur resis­tance and high sta­bil­i­ty and selec­tiv­i­ty. His col­lab­o­ra­tions with indus­try have led to new zeo­lites with sig­nif­i­cant poten­tial in cat­alyt­ic crack­ing because of their sta­bil­i­ty and desir­able prod­uct dis­tri­b­u­tions. Pro­fes­sor Cor­ma has pub­lished exten­sive­ly about applied aspects of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis relat­ed to refin­ing tech­nol­o­gy. These pub­li­ca­tions have recent­ly explored the kinet­ics of organosul­fur reac­tions dur­ing crack­ing reac­tions and the details of hydroi­so­mer­iza­tion catal­y­sis on acid and bifunc­tion­al cat­a­lysts, all of which are of crit­i­cal impor­tance in sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, effi­cient ener­gy use and respon­si­ble man­age­ment of the envi­ron­ment.

His design of well struc­tured oxi­da­tion and hydro­gena­tion cat­a­lysts has lead to new cat­alyt­ic routes for the chemos­e­lec­tive of lac­tones (Nature, 412, 423 (2001); Chemos­e­lec­tive hydro­gena­tion of sub­sti­tut­ed nitroaro­mat­ics (Sci­ence 313, 332 (2006), Chemos­e­lec­tive syn­the­sis of azo­com­pounds (Sci­ence 322, 1661 (2008). He is now active­ly patent­ing and pub­lish­ing on well defined mul­ti­site sol­id cat­a­lysts for cas­cade reac­tions.

In addi­tion to his many out­stand­ing research accom­plish­ments, Avelino’s con­tin­ued lead­er­ship in the field has been rec­og­nized by numer­ous awards, includ­ing the Fran­cois Gault Award of the Euro­pean Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (2001), the Eugene Houdry Award of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (2002), the Don­ald Breck Award of the Inter­na­tion­al Zeo­lite Asso­ci­a­tion (2004), and the Gabor A. Somor­jai Award for Cre­ative Research in Catal­y­sis (2008).

Sol Weller has passed away

Sol W. Weller, a retired pro­fes­sor of chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty at Buf­fa­lo, died Sun­day, August 24, 2008 in Beech­wood Con­tin­u­ing Care, Get­zville. He was 90. Born in Detroit, he earned his Ph. D. in chem­istry from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. Dur­ing World War II, he worked on the Man­hat­tan Project. Over the next two decades, he worked in chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing, spe­cial­iz­ing in kinet­ics, coal liq­ue­fac­tion, the sep­a­ra­tion of gas­es by per­me­ation, cat­a­lysts and stan­dard­iza­tion of cat­a­lyst- test­ing meth­ods. He was respon­si­ble for sev­er­al patents in his field. In 1963, he became a pro­fes­sor of chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing at The State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York at Buf­fa­lo (UB), where he taught until 1988. While at UB, he held the C. C. Fur­nas Memo­r­i­al Chair in Engi­neer­ing in 1983. He also received two Ful­bright Awards, the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excel­lence in Teach­ing in 1973, the Storch Award for coal research in 1981, Mur­phee Award for Indus­tri­al and Engi­neer­ing Chem­istry in 1982 and the Schoel­lkopf Medal in 1984. Dr. Weller also taught and con­sult­ed in Madrid, Spain; Istan­bul, Turkey; Oxford, Eng­land; and Haifa, Israel. He wrote many sci­en­tif­ic papers, book chap­ters and ency­clo­pe­dia entries dur­ing his career. A tal­ent­ed ama­teur pianist, Dr. Weller and the for­mer Miri­am Dam­ick, his wife of 62 years, host­ed many musi­cal events in their Williamsville home. She died in 2006.
 
Source: The Buf­fa­lo News, Sept. 3, 2008

Nominations open for Boudart Award for the Advancement of Catalysis

Michel Boudart Award for the Advancement of Catalysis

 
An Award pre­sent­ed joint­ly by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties.
 
The Michel Boudart Award for the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by the Hal­dor Top­søe Com­pa­ny, and is admin­is­tered joint­ly by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties. The Award will be pre­sent­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd num­bered years. The recip­i­ent will give ple­nary lec­tures at the bian­nu­al meet­ings of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (NAM) and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (EFCATS) (EuropaCat). The award con­sists of a plaque or object of art and a prize of $6,000. Up to an addi­tion­al $2,000 will be made avail­able for oth­er­wise non-reim­bursed trav­el expens­es.

The 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. The Award selec­tion process will empha­size accom­plish­ments and con­tri­bu­tions pub­lished with­in the five pre­ced­ing years. Can­di­dates may be nom­i­nat­ed with­out any restric­tion of nation­al ori­gin, thus reflect­ing the inter­na­tion­al scope of the career and con­tri­bu­tions of Michel Boudart.

The recip­i­ent of the Michel Boudart Award will be select­ed by a com­mit­tee of renowned researchers appoint­ed joint­ly by the Pres­i­dents of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties. The selec­tion shall be made with­out regard for age, sex, affil­i­a­tion, or nation­al ori­gin.

Nom­i­na­tions should clear­ly state the qual­i­fi­ca­tions and accom­plish­ments of the nom­i­nee and should also include a CV and no more than two sup­port­ing let­ters. A crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the sig­nif­i­cance of pub­li­ca­tions and patents should be made, as well as a state­ment of the par­tic­u­lar contribution(s) on which the nom­i­na­tion is based. Each nom­i­na­tion is to be sub­mit­ted as one com­plete pack­age (nom­i­na­tion let­ter, CV, 2 sup­port­ing let­ters, and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion).

After Sep­tem­ber 2008, one com­plete elec­tron­ic copy of the nom­i­na­tion pack­ages for the 2009 Boudart Award should be sent to the Pres­i­dent of The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (John Armor; nacatsoc@verizon.net) or the Pres­i­dent of The Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of the Euro­pean Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (Roel Prins; prins@tech.chem.ethz.ch) by 17 Novem­ber 2008. Nom­i­na­tors should expect to receive email con­fir­ma­tion of their sub­mis­sion.

Reminder: Local Club Student Awards

A reminder that each local club can apply for the new annu­al stu­dent sup­port awards for a max­i­mum of $1,000. per year. The amount can only be used for stu­dents (both grad­u­ate & post­doc­tor­al). A time­ly pro­pos­al from the local club must be sub­mit­ted before the event to the Pres­i­dent which out­lines the pro­ject­ed use of the monies; a full account­ing of the monies has to be pro­vid­ed by the local club (in good stand­ing) to the Trea­sur­er short­ly after the event, but with­in one year. This award is dis­tinct from the Kokes Awards for the NAM meet­ings. The mon­ey can be used for the student’s meals, trav­el, liv­ing, and for poster awards. The award will be made avail­able 1–2 months before the spon­sored event. Local clubs need to allow one addi­tion­al month for prepa­ra­tion of the check; the funds are not intend­ed as a means to gen­er­ate advanced income (via inter­est), but are intend­ed to sup­port stu­dent involve­ment at the spon­sored event by the local catal­y­sis club. Address pro­pos­als to the Pres­i­dent at nacatsoc@verizon.net.

O. V. Kylov has passed away

Pro­fes­sor Oleg Valenti­novich Krylov, one of the major fig­ures in the field of catal­y­sis for sev­er­al decades, passed away in Moscow on the July 28, 2008, at the age of 83.

Oleg Krylov was born on Sep­tem­ber 13, 1924 into a fam­i­ly of teach­ers in the city of Ivano­vo. His moth­er was a high school biol­o­gy teacher and his father taught chem­istry at the Agri­cul­tur­al Insti­tute. It was, in fact, with­in his fam­i­ly that the main qual­i­ties of his per­son­al­i­ty were laid down, which became so bright­ly evi­dent in the future: a love for the nat­ur­al sci­ences and art, and a con­sid­er­ate atti­tude toward peo­ple.

Upon com­ple­tion of high school, Oleg Krylov entered the Ivano­vo Chem­i­cal Insti­tute, upon com­ple­tion of which he became a grad­u­ate stu­dent in the lab­o­ra­to­ry of Prof. S. E. Rogin­skii in the Col­loidal-Elec­tro­chem­i­cal Insti­tute (sub­se­quent­ly – the Insti­tute of Phys­i­cal Chem­istry) of the USSR Acad­e­my of Sci­ences. This lab­o­ra­to­ry was then one of the lead­ers in the devel­op­ment of new con­cepts in the sci­ence of catal­y­sis – the the­o­ry of non-uni­form sur­faces, the elec­tron­ic the­o­ry of adsorp­tion, and the method­ol­o­gy for select­ing cat­a­lysts for reac­tions of var­i­ous types. The theme of his candidate’s the­sis, which he defend­ed in 1951 under the direc­tion of Prof. S. E. Rogin­skii, was the acti­va­tion of plat­inum by oxy­gen for reac­tions of oxi­da­tion and hydro­gena­tion. In 1953 at the sug­ges­tion of S. E. Rogin­skii (whom Oleg Valenti­novich val­ued very high­ly and con­sid­ered his teacher) he took up a new theme – the inves­ti­ga­tion of the rules for select­ing oxide cat­a­lysts. In sig­nif­i­cant mea­sure this choice defined his sci­en­tif­ic inter­ests for many years.

In 1961, at the sug­ges­tion of its direc­tor, Nobel lau­re­ate and aca­d­e­mi­cian N. N. Semen­ov, the lab­o­ra­to­ry of S. E. Rogin­skii moved to the Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Physics (ICP). From this time on, all of O. V. Krylov’s sci­en­tif­ic endeav­ors were con­nect­ed with the ICP. His main area of inter­est dur­ing this peri­od was defin­ing the rela­tion­ships between the elec­tron­ic con­fig­u­ra­tions and cat­alyt­ic prop­er­ties of tran­si­tion met­al com­pounds, par­tic­u­lar­ly for com­plex reac­tion sys­tems. He elu­ci­dat­ed impor­tant cor­re­la­tions and rela­tion­ships that were gen­er­al­ized in his doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion, which he defend­ed in 1964. This work served as the basis for the mono­graph enti­tled Catal­y­sis by Non-Met­als (pub­lished in Eng­lish by Aca­d­e­m­ic Press in 1970), which to this day is one of the clas­sic texts on het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis.

Over many decades Prof. Krylov direct­ed a lab­o­ra­to­ry and a divi­sion, and served as Deputy Direc­tor for Sci­ence of the ICP. He ini­ti­at­ed in situ inves­ti­ga­tions of cat­alyt­ic process­es using IR, UV, and EPR spec­troscopy, x‑ray phase analy­sis, calorime­try; and launched inves­ti­ga­tions to study the role of non-equi­lib­ri­um and excit­ed states and par­ti­cles in adsorp­tion and catal­y­sis. He (in col­lab­o­ra­tion with L. Ya Mar­go­lis and cowork­ers) for­mu­lat­ed ideas about the role of mul­ti-phase cat­a­lysts in the process­es of par­tial oxi­da­tion, which led to a new under­stand­ing of the mean­ing of “active cen­ters, as well as process for their syn­the­sis. In the ear­ly 1980s Prof. Krylov was one of the ini­tia­tors of broad-based inves­ti­ga­tions in the area of nat­ur­al gas con­ver­sion by chem­i­cal means.

O. V. Krylov played and invalu­able role in the devel­op­ment of inter­na­tion­al sci­en­tif­ic con­nec­tions. Over many years, he was respon­si­ble for this activ­i­ty with­in the frame­work of the Sci­en­tif­ic Coun­cil on Catal­y­sis. In par­tic­u­lar, he was one of the ini­tia­tors and lead­ers (togeth­er with aca­d­e­mi­cian G. K. Boreskov) of the col­lab­o­ra­tion on catal­y­sis between the USSR and the USA in the 1970s. He was the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the USSR, and then Rus­sia, in many inter­na­tion­al sci­en­tif­ic orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing jour­nal edi­to­r­i­al boards, the Coun­cil of the Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress of Catal­y­sis (now known as IACS), the Coun­cil of the World Con­gress on Oxi­da­tion Catal­y­sis, of which he was one of the ini­tia­tors. One can con­fi­dent­ly say that Prof. Krylov was one of the peo­ple who can be thanked for estab­lish­ing with­in the world com­mu­ni­ty an atmos­phere, in which the fun­da­men­tal atti­tudes are per­son­al kind­ness, decen­cy, and sci­en­tif­ic hon­esty.

One of Prof. Krylov’s main activ­i­ties dur­ing the last 15 years was to main­tain the Moscow sem­i­nars on catal­y­sis, a task that he led for near­ly 40 years. The sig­nif­i­cance of this sem­i­nar for cat­a­lyst com­mu­ni­ty in Rus­sia can­not be over­es­ti­mat­ed, espe­cial­ly when many pre­vi­ous­ly estab­lished con­nec­tions and forms of orga­ni­za­tion for sci­en­tif­ic activ­i­ties were dis­ap­pear­ing. This sem­i­nar exam­ined not only con­tem­po­rary fun­da­men­tal and applied ques­tions of catal­y­sis, but also more gen­er­al ques­tions of sci­ence, paths and lim­its of its devel­op­ment, which great­ly con­cerned O. V. Krylov in recent years.

Prof. Krylov’s work of more than 60 years con­sist­ed of 12 mono­graphs, more than 450 papers and reviews, and tens of patents. More than 50 can­di­date and doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tions were defend­ed under his lead­er­ship and with his par­tic­i­pa­tion as a con­sul­tant.
 
Writ­ten by Mikail Sinev, trans­lat­ed by Alex­is Bell.

New historical video clips available

Thanks to the efforts of Burt Davis (the NACS video­g­ra­ph­er) and our web design­er (Ray Buch­ta) we have launched quite a few new video clips of his­tor­i­cal fig­ures in catal­y­sis. These include:

  • John Bailor
  • Robert Bur­well
  • John Butt
  • Adal­bert Farkas
  • Robert Garten
  • Ricar­do Levy
  • Don­ald Nace
  • Edward Teller
  • Hal­dor Top­søe
  • John Turke­vich

You can find these 5 minute video clips with­in the His­to­ry sub­fold­er off the Home page of the NACS web­site.
 
John Armor

Nominations open for Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis

The Paul H. Emmett Award in Fun­da­men­tal Catal­y­sis is spon­sored by the Davi­son Chem­i­cal Divi­sion of W.R. Grace and Com­pa­ny. It is admin­is­tered by The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and is award­ed bien­ni­al­ly in odd num­bered years, gen­er­al­ly at the North Amer­i­can meet­ing of The Catal­y­sis Soci­ety, where the awardee will be asked to give a ple­nary lec­ture. The award con­sists of a plaque and a prize of $5,000. An addi­tion­al $500 is avail­able for oth­er­wise unre­im­bursed trav­el expens­es.

The pur­pose of the Award is to rec­og­nize and encour­age 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.

Selec­tion of the Award win­ner will be made by a com­mit­tee of renowned sci­en­tists and engi­neers appoint­ed by the Pres­i­dent of The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. Selec­tion shall be made with­out regard for sex, nation­al­i­ty or affi­I­ia­tion. The award win­ner must not have turned 46 on April 1st of the award year , thus nom­i­na­tion doc­u­ments should indi­cate the age and birth­date of the nom­i­nee. [The next award is the 2009 Award year for this Emmett Award (nom­i­na­tions due by Sep­tem­ber 1, 2008). Thus, nom­i­nees should not yet be 46 on April 1, 2009.] Posthu­mous awards will be made only when knowl­edge of the awardee’s death is received after announce­ment of the Award Com­mit­tee’s deci­sion. Nom­i­na­tions for the Award should present the nom­i­nee’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions, accom­plish­ments, birth­date, and biog­ra­phy. A crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of the sig­nif­i­cance of pub­li­ca­tions and patents should be made as well as a state­ment of the par­tic­u­lar contribution(s) on which the nom­i­na­tion is based. Nom­i­na­tion doc­u­ments should be sub­mit­ted in one com­plete pack­age to the Pres­i­dent of the Soci­ety along with no more than two sec­ond­ing let­ters.

Selec­tion of the 2009 Emmett Award win­ner will be made by a com­mit­tee of renowned sci­en­tists and engi­neers appoint­ed by the Pres­i­dent of The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety. Nom­i­na­tion pack­ages for the Award must be received by on 1 Sep­tem­ber 2008.

All nom­i­na­tion pack­ages (one ELECTRONIC COPY) for the Emmett Award should be should be sent to John Armor, Pres­i­dent, North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety; at nacatsoc@verizon.net . Receipt of any nom­i­na­tion, will be con­firmed by an email mes­sage sent to each nom­i­na­tor.