Tag Archives: Obituary

In Memoriam: Laszlo Guczi (1932–2012)

Professor László Guczi

Pro­fes­sor Lás­zló Guczi

Pro­fes­sor Lás­zló Guczi a wide­ly known and respect­ed sci­en­tist passed away on 20th Decem­ber 2012 after a long bat­tle with ill­ness. He showed us what a clas­sic schol­ar is like: pro­fes­sion­al, knowl­edge­able, patient and kind.

Lás­zló Guczi was born on 23th March 1932 in Szeged, Hun­gary. As a young­ster he was a tal­ent­ed vio­lin play­er and planned to become a musi­cian. Luck­i­ly for the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty he accept­ed the argu­ments of his moth­er and enrolled at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Szeged. He grad­u­at­ed with an MSc degree in chem­istry in 1959 and start­ed his career in the Iso­tope Lab­o­ra­to­ry of the Research Insti­tute of Soil Sci­ence and Agro­chem­istry, Hun­gar­i­an Acad­e­my of Sci­ences. He was involved in the study of the inter­ac­tion of alkyl iodides with car­bon and red phos­pho­rous using the dif­fer­en­tial iso­tope method.

In 1962 Pro­fes­sor Tétényi invit­ed him to work at the Insti­tute of Iso­topes, Budapest. This insti­tute was his “head­quar­ter” over 50 years. The catal­y­sis research at the insti­tute was focused on the mul­ti­plet the­o­ry of Balandin apply­ing iso­topes as trac­ers. In hydrogenol­y­sis of ethane on Ni, Pt and Pd metal­lic pow­ders the bond­ing of reac­tants to the sur­face was char­ac­ter­ized by C13 and C14 label­ing as well as
H‑D and H‑T exchange. In this peri­od he spent one year in 1964/65 as post doc­tor­al fel­low at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sheffield with Pro­fes­sor J.V. Tyrrell. He received the degree of “Can­di­date of Sci­ence” and “Doc­tor of Sci­ence” from the Hun­gar­i­an Acad­e­my of Sci­ence in 1968 and 1976, respec­tive­ly.

In 1976 he estab­lished the Research Group on Catal­y­sis. He devel­oped the “Dou­ble Label­ing Method” and applied it in the study of the mech­a­nism of the selec­tive hydro­gena­tion of acety­lene and buta­di­ene. Togeth­er with Pro­fes­sor Tétényi and Pro­fes­sor Paál he received the Hun­gar­i­an State Prize in 1983 for the devel­op­ment of the prin­ci­ple of the “cat­alyt­ic sys­tem”. The essence of this prin­ci­ple is that the cat­a­lyst and the sub­strates togeth­er form the “active sites” act­ing not as sta­t­ic for­ma­tions but change con­tin­u­ous­ly dur­ing the life of the cat­a­lyst. He ini­ti­at­ed study of the struc­ture-activ­i­ty rela­tion­ship apply­ing high­ly dis­persed sup­port­ed met­al cat­a­lysts. At the begin­ning, Fe, Ru and FeRu bimetal­lic car­bonyl clus­ters as cat­a­lyst pre­cur­sors were stud­ied in the Fish­er-Trop­sch reac­tion. He intro­duced Möss­bauer spec­troscopy for in situ char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the cat­a­lysts. Based on this research he was invit­ed as ple­nary speak­er to the 9th ICC in 1988 to give a talk about clus­ter catal­y­sis. Lat­er on he extend­ed the research to inter­fa­cial chem­istry in mod­el cat­a­lysts to define the sur­face species at mol­e­c­u­lar lev­el and their influ­ence on the activ­i­ty and selec­tiv­i­ty, elec­tron prop­er­ties of nanopar­ti­cles, gen­e­sis of bimetal­lic par­ti­cles geo­met­ri­cal­ly con­fined in zeo­lite cage, role of bimetal­lic cat­a­lysts in deNOx, in CO hydrogenation/oxidation and methane acti­va­tion to form hydro­car­bons. In 1993, he was award­ed by Repub­lic’s Order Offi­cer Cross. In the last two decades he turned to the catal­y­sis by gold. He was espe­cial­ly devot­ed to study of the inter­ac­tion of gold with pro­mot­ing oxides apply­ing nan­odis­persed sys­tems pre­pared by col­loidal meth­ods and mod­el sys­tems pre­pared by phys­i­cal meth­ods. For all this research he was eager to equip his lab­o­ra­to­ry with sophis­ti­cat­ed and up-to-date tech­niques such as XPS, FT-IR, STM and SFG (Sum Fre­quen­cy Gen­er­a­tion). He undoubt­ed­ly played a pio­neer­ing role in estab­lish­ing these method­olo­gies in the Hun­gar­i­an sci­en­tif­ic cul­ture.

He was an extra­or­di­nary and a high­ly tal­ent­ed per­son, who was excel­lent in build­ing con­tacts and orga­niz­ing sci­en­tif­ic co-oper­a­tions world­wide. Lás­zló was like an ambas­sador for the Hun­gar­i­an catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty. He received recog­ni­tion all over the world, which was evi­denced by the spe­cial issues pub­lished in Applied Catal­y­sis A and Top­ics in Catal­y­sis on the occa­sions of his 70th and 80th birth­day, respec­tive­ly.

He pub­lished over 400 research papers, 12 books and chap­ters, pre­sent­ed about 430 lec­tures (out of these 34 ple­nary or invit­ed ones). He super­vised 22 PhD stu­dents, some of them from abroad. All of László’s stu­dents got post doc­tor­al posi­tion at high­ly respect­ed uni­ver­si­ties by his help. He was a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Szeged and the Budapest Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy and Eco­nom­ics. He was a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor at Worces­ter Poly­tech­nic Insti­tute, USA; The Rijks Uni­ver­si­ty, Lei­den; Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh, USA; Lawrence Berke­ley Lab­o­ra­to­ry, USA; P&M Curie Uni­ver­si­ty, France; Schuit Insti­tute of Catal­y­sis, The Nether­lands. He served as region­al edi­tor for Applied Catal­y­sis in 1980–2006. He was also on the advi­so­ry board of Catal­y­sis Today and Reac­tion Kinet­ics and Catal­y­sis Let­ters. He played major role in orga­niz­ing the 10th ICC in Budapest in 1992 and the 8th Inter­na­tion­al Sym­po­sium on Rela­tion between Homo­ge­neous and Het­ero­ge­neous Catal­y­sis at Lake Bal­a­ton in 1995.

In pri­vate life Lás­zló was a lov­ing hus­band, father and grand­fa­ther. He was an excel­lent cook who enjoyed enter­tain­ing his friends and co-work­ers in his house at Érd, in the sub­urb of Budapest. Dur­ing his life, clas­si­cal music remained his pas­sion.

We all admired his devo­tion to the sci­ence, his unlim­it­ed ener­gy, and enjoyed his sense of humor and charm. We will great­ly miss him.
 
Obit­u­ary pre­pared by Zoltán Schay.

In Memoriam: James R. Katzer (1941–2012)

James Robert Katzer

James Robert Katzer

James Robert Katzer, for­mer pro­fes­sor of chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing and vice-pres­i­dent of tech­nol­o­gy for Mobil Oil Cor­po­ra­tion, died in Mar­shall­town, IA on Novem­ber 2, 2012. He was 71. Katzer was inter­na­tion­al­ly respect­ed for his exper­tise and major con­tri­bu­tions to ener­gy tech­nolo­gies and pol­i­cy. Jim Katzer built a career as a high­ly respect­ed researcher and man­ag­er in the areas of cat­alyt­ic sci­ence and in the analy­sis of tech­ni­cal issues relat­ed to the pro­duc­tion of high qual­i­ty fuels. Jim was a co-author, along with George C. A. Schuit and Bruce C. Gates of The Chem­istry of Cat­alyt­ic Process­es, pub­lished by McGraw Hill in 1978. Dur­ing his career, he authored or co-authored more than 80 tech­ni­cal arti­cles and 6 U.S. Patents.

Jim grad­u­at­ed from Iowa State with a degree in chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing in 1964. He received his Sc.D. from MIT in the same dis­ci­pline in 1969, and then imme­di­ate­ly joined the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware as an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing. He was instru­men­tal in found­ing the university’s Cen­ter for Cat­alyt­ic Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, attract­ing more than $800,000 in new research fund­ing in its first year. Togeth­er with Pro­fes­sor Bruce Gates, Jim estab­lished one of the first col­lab­o­ra­tive indus­try –aca­d­e­m­ic cen­ters of its kind. He served as its first direc­tor. By 1980, the Cen­ter list­ed 23 com­pa­nies as mem­bers and had a total research bud­get of $1.8 mil­lion. Jim was pro­mot­ed to full pro­fes­sor in Delaware’s Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing in 1978.

In 1981, Jim moved to Mobil Oil Corporation’s Cen­tral Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry in Prince­ton, NJ as man­ag­er of CRL’s cat­a­lyst sec­tion. He advanced in man­age­ment at Mobil, hold­ing posi­tions of Divi­sion Manger of Process R&D and Vice Pres­i­dent of Plan­ning for Research and Engi­neer­ing. In 1997, he was appoint­ed Vice Pres­i­dent for Tech­nol­o­gy.

With the merg­er of Mobil and Exxon in 1999, Jim became Man­ag­er of Plan­ning and Port­fo­lio Analy­sis for Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny. He retired from Exxon­Mo­bil Research and Engi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny in 2004.

In recog­ni­tion of his con­tri­bu­tions to catal­y­sis and reac­tion engi­neer­ing research and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of cat­alyt­ic process­es, Jim was elect­ed to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing in 1998. In 2001 he was award­ed the Marston Medal, Iowa State University’s high­est hon­or for a grad­u­ate from its Col­lege of Engi­neer­ing. From 2006 to 2010 Jim was mem­ber of 4 sig­nif­i­cant Nation­al Research Coun­cil stud­ies on Tran­si­tions in Trans­porta­tion, which helped define a strat­e­gy for the US’s ener­gy future. He served as a vis­it­ing sci­en­tist for MIT’s Lab­o­ra­to­ry for Ener­gy and the Envi­ron­ment from 2004 until 2007, where he was the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the MIT Future of Coal study.

At the time of his death, he was an affil­i­ate pro­fes­sor, a mem­ber of the advi­so­ry board for Iowa State University’s Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal and Bio­log­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, and a mem­ber of the Tech­ni­cal Advi­so­ry Board for the Chi­na Nation­al Insti­tute for Clean and Low-Car­bon Fuels. He was also a mem­ber of the Tech­ni­cal Advi­so­ry Board for Rive Tech­nol­o­gy and a mem­ber of the Cos­mos Club of Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

In his free time, he enjoyed sail­ing and gar­den­ing. Jim is sur­vived by his wife of 32 years, Isabelle (McGre­gor) Katzer; his moth­er, Vel­ma Sheller; son, Robert James, MD (Jen­ni) Katzer, and grand­daugh­ter, Autumn Eliz­a­beth Katzer; daugh­ter, Anne Louise Katzer; broth­ers, Wayne Katzer and Ken (Sharon) Katzer; and sis­ter, JoAnn Katzer.
 
(Con­tributed by Thomas Deg­nan, Roland H. Heck and Jose Santi­este­ban)

In Memoriam: Paul Burg Weisz (1919–2012)

Paul B. Weisz

Paul B. Weisz, 93, for­mer Mobil Senior Sci­en­tist and Man­ag­er of Mobil’s Cen­tral Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry and an inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized expert in the area of petro­le­um refin­ing cat­a­lysts died on Tues­day, Sep­tem­ber 25th in State Col­lege, PA. Born in Pilsen, Czecho­slo­va­kia, he was the son of Alexan­der and Amalia Weisz. He is sur­vived by his wife, Rho­da A. M. Burg and two chil­dren, Ingrid and Randy Weisz. He grew up with an innate desire to become a sci­en­tist. Paul pub­lished his first arti­cle in a ham radio jour­nal at the age of 16.

Paul emi­grat­ed to the U.S. in 1939 from Berlin, inter­rupt­ing his grad­u­ate stud­ies in pre- World War II Ger­many to attend Auburn Uni­ver­si­ty where he com­plet­ed his B.S. degree in less than one year. Fol­low­ing his grad­u­a­tion, he worked as a researcher at the Bar­tol Research Foun­da­tion of the Franklin Insti­tute in Swarth­more, PA. He lat­er moved to the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy where, as an elec­tron­ics engi­neer, he par­tic­i­pat­ed in the devel­op­ment of LORAN, a long range radio sig­nal-based aid to nav­i­ga­tion.

Paul joined Mobil Research and Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion in 1946 as a Research Asso­ciate at Mobil’s Pauls­boro, NJ research lab­o­ra­to­ry. He pro­gressed through a num­ber of tech­ni­cal assign­ments, reach­ing the posi­tion of Senior Sci­en­tist, the high­est tech­ni­cal posi­tion in Mobil in 1961. He man­aged Mobil’s Explorato­ry Process Research orga­ni­za­tion from 1967 until 1969 and its Cen­tral Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry in Prince­ton, NJ from 1969 through 1982. Paul retired from Mobil in 1984.

Short­ly after join­ing Mobil, Paul became inter­est­ed in the sub­ject of dif­fu­sion and catal­y­sis. This was the foun­da­tion for a life­long inter­est in porous mate­ri­als as cat­a­lysts and specif­i­cal­ly in crys­talline hydrous alu­mi­nosil­i­cates known as zeo­lites. Along with sev­er­al Mobil col­lab­o­ra­tors, he pio­neered the use of nat­ur­al and syn­thet­ic zeo­lites as cat­a­lysts for petro­le­um refin­ing and petro­chem­i­cal man­u­fac­ture. These zeo­lite cat­a­lysts even­tu­al­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ized many refin­ing process­es because they facil­i­tat­ed only cer­tain reac­tions between mol­e­cules hav­ing spe­cif­ic dimen­sions.

In 1960, Paul pub­lished a ground-break­ing paper co-authored with Vince Frilette, anoth­er Mobil sci­en­tist. This became the foun­da­tion of “shape-selec­tive catal­y­sis” con­cept, and also one of Paul’s wide­ly cit­ed papers (J. Phys. Chem., 64, 382 (1960)). Process­es based on Paul’s con­cept of shape-selec­tive catal­y­sis were first com­mer­cial­ized in the ear­ly 1960’s. Through­out the 1970’s and 1980’s Paul was close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Mobil’s devel­op­ment of new cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als and the process­es that were devel­oped around them.

While work­ing at Mobil, Paul took a sab­bat­i­cal in 1964 to earn his doc­tor­al degree from the Eidgenos­sis­che Tech­nis­che Hochschule (ETH) in Zurich, Switzer­land in 1966. His doc­tor­al research the­sis was based on an analy­sis of the per­me­ation of dyes into fibers. His analy­sis was the foun­da­tion for some of the fun­da­men­tal laws asso­ci­at­ed with dif­fu­sion of dye mol­e­cules into fibers.

One of Paul’s for­mi­da­ble strengths was his abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate com­plex the­o­ries suc­cinct­ly. He was a con­stant con­trib­u­tor to the ACS pub­li­ca­tion ChemTech through­out the 70’s and 80’s where he con­tin­ued to enlight­en and delight read­ers with his insight­ful obser­va­tions of how phe­nom­e­na like dif­fu­sion and kinet­ics applied to every­day life.

His 1962 arti­cle with J. S. Hicks, enti­tled “The Behav­ior of Porous Cat­a­lyst Par­ti­cles in View of Inter­nal Mass and Heat Dif­fu­sion Effects,” Chem. Eng. Sci. 17, 265 (1962) was select­ed as one of the 50 most influ­en­tial arti­cles in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Sci­ence in the publication’s 1995 “Fron­tiers in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Sci­ence” com­mem­o­ra­tive edi­tion.

After he retired from Mobil in 1984, he began a third, high­ly pro­duc­tive career, apply­ing chem­i­cal and phys­i­cal prin­ci­ples to bio­med­ical research first at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia an then at Penn State. Work­ing with Dr. Madeleine Jouille at U. Penn he syn­the­sized mol­e­cules that mim­ic some of the heal­ing prop­er­ties of heparin, but that do not exhib­it heparin’s poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous side effects.

For his numer­ous indus­tri­al research accom­plish­ments and con­tri­bu­tions to the sci­ence of catal­y­sis, Paul earned many awards includ­ing: The E. V. Mur­phree Award in Indus­tri­al Chem­istry from the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety (1972), The Pio­neer Award from the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chemists (1974), The Leo Friend Award of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety (1977), the R. H. Wil­helm Award from the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Engi­neers (1978), the Lavosier Medal from the Soci­ete Chemique de France (1983), The Lang­muir Dis­tin­guished Lec­tur­er Award from the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety (1983), the Perkin Medal, from the Amer­i­can Sec­tion of the Soci­ety of Chem­i­cal Indus­try (1985), The Carothers Award from the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety (1987), and the Nation­al Medal of Tech­nol­o­gy from Pres­i­dent George H. Bush in 1992. He was elect­ed to the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing, one of the high­est hon­ors for an engi­neer, in 1977 and received an Hon­orary Doc­tor­ate (Sc.D. in tech­no­log­i­cal sci­ence) from the Swiss Fed­er­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in 1980.

Begin­ning in the ear­ly 1950’s Paul’s work at Mobil Oil with col­lab­o­ra­tors includ­ing N. Y. Chen, Vince Frilette, John McCul­lough, Dwight Prater, Jack Wise, Al Schwartz, Heinz Heine­man, Fritz Smith, and oth­ers helped set the foun­da­tions for zeo­lite catal­y­sis. His sem­i­nal work in the use of nat­ur­al zeo­lites as high­ly shape-selec­tive con­ver­sion cat­a­lysts set the stage for 50+ years of high­ly pro­duc­tive process research and rev­o­lu­tion­ized the refin­ing and petro­chem­i­cal indus­tries. Paul’s nine­ty-one issued U.S. patents and more than 180 jour­nal pub­li­ca­tions cov­er top­ics rang­ing from car­bona­ceous deposits on cat­a­lysts to chem­i­cal agents that impact the dif­fu­sion of drugs in human cells. Paul Weisz leaves behind a very rich sci­en­tif­ic and tech­ni­cal lega­cy that has great­ly impact­ed our aca­d­e­m­ic and indus­tri­al catal­y­sis research com­mu­ni­ties. His work con­tin­ues to inspire chemists and chem­i­cal engi­neers work­ing in the area of catal­y­sis and bio­ma­te­ri­als.
 
(Con­tributed by Thomas Deg­nan, Jose’ Santi­este­ban, and Dominick Maz­zone)

In Memoriam: Jose M. Parera (1930–2012)

Pro­fes­sor José M. Par­era

Pro­fes­sor José M. Par­era

Pro­fes­sor José M. Par­era passed away on Sep­tem­ber 10, 2012.

Pro­fes­sor José M. Par­era was born in Argenti­na in 1930. He grad­u­at­ed as Chem­i­cal Engi­neer at the School of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, Uni­ver­si­dad Nacional del Litoral (UNL) in San­ta Fe, Argenti­na in 1958 as the top-ranked grad­u­ate of the Depart­ment. He was then grant­ed a Nation­al Research Coun­cil (CONICET) schol­ar­ship to study at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege in Lon­don, where he start­ed his work on het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis.

In his long, fruit­ful career, he was Founder and Direc­tor of Insti­tute of Catal­y­sis and Petro­chem­istry (INCAPE) of San­ta Fe, Argenti­na and a pio­neer through­out Latin Amer­i­ca in teach­ing and research in the field of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. He served as a mem­ber of the Edi­to­r­i­al Board of sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al jour­nals in that field, such as Catal­y­sis Reviews Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing, Applied Catal­y­sis, Latin Amer­i­can Applied Research and Jour­nal of Chem­i­cal Tech­nol­o­gy and Biotech­nol­o­gy. He received many awards and retired as Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of the Uni­ver­si­dad Nacional del Litoral.

In Memoriam: Michel Boudart (1924–2012)

Michel Boudart, chem­i­cal engi­neer and expert in catal­y­sis, dies at 87 Pro­fes­sor Boudart taught at Prince­ton and Berke­ley but was best known for his five decades at the heart of the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at Stan­ford. His influ­ence shaped catal­y­sis dur­ing the post-­-war peri­od when ener­gy, defense and space indus­tries demand­ed a deep­er under­stand­ing of chem­i­cal reac­tions.
 
By Andrew Myers
 
Michel Boudart, a pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and for five decades one of the world’s lead­ing experts in catal­y­sis, died May 2 at an assist­ed liv­ing cen­ter in Palo Alto, Cal­i­for­nia, of mul­ti­ple organ fail­ure. He was 87.

Boudart was the first William M. Keck, Sr. Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and one of a very few indi­vid­u­als who were respon­si­ble for estab­lish­ing the rep­u­ta­tion of Stanford’s chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing depart­ment. The cen­tral theme of his research was the cat­alyt­ic prop­er­ties of met­als, par­tic­u­lar­ly small met­al par­ti­cles.

Boudart essen­tial­ly brought catal­y­sis, as a sci­ence, to chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing in the Unit­ed States. He was an inter­na­tion­al ambas­sador for the field over his entire career.

Michel Boudart was a world renowned and influ­en­tial expert in the field of catal­y­sis who brought the Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing to promi­nence and trained sev­er­al decades of stu­dents,” said Andreas Acrivos, a fel­low pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford and now pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus both at Stan­ford and at the City Col­lege of CUNY. “He left a lega­cy that would be dif­fi­cult to repli­cate.”

As a pro­fes­sor, Boudart super­vised what was con­sis­tent­ly one of the larg­er groups of PhD can­di­dates in the depart­ment, even­tu­al­ly guid­ing over 70 doc­tor­al can­di­dates to their degrees and men­tor­ing over 100 post-­-doc­tor­al can­di­dates and vis­it­ing sci­en­tists. The dias­po­ra of his for­mer stu­dents would go on to lead and shape the field.

Le plus de saveur

 
An avid inter­na­tion­al trav­eller, Boudart and his wife, Mari­na, boast­ed friends across the world. His office sport­ed Japan­ese sho­ji screens, abstract prints, and over­stuffed sofas and – occu­py­ing one entire wall – an immense peri­od­ic table of the ele­ments, print­ed in Russ­ian, which he read with ease.

In a brief biog­ra­phy, Boudart cit­ed as his per­son­al phi­los­o­phy a quote from French lit­er­ary the­o­rist Roland Barthes: “Nul pou­voir, un peu de savoir, un peu de sagesse, et le plus de saveur pos­si­ble.” Trans­lat­ed loose­ly, it reads: “No pow­er, a lit­tle knowl­edge, a lit­tle wis­dom, and as much fla­vor as pos­si­ble.” In this con­text, he will always be remem­bered as a man of real per­son­al charis­ma and, one of the last “gen­tle­man sci­en­tists.”

Catal­y­sis is the study of chem­i­cal process­es by which one sub­stance, the cat­a­lyst, pro­motes a reac­tion between oth­er sub­stances with­out itself chang­ing.
It is fun­da­men­tal to the chem­i­cal, petro­le­um and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­tries, among many oth­ers.

In the post-­-war era, the Unit­ed States became the acknowl­edged leader in the field, most­ly owing to advances flow­ing out of Amer­i­can acad­e­mia and indus­try. Boudart was at the cen­ter of it all. He was an unabashed cham­pi­on of catal­y­sis. Though the field is obscure to most lay audi­ences, catal­y­sis has a pro­found impact on our world and how we live.

In a pub­lished inter­view, Boudart once laid out his case: With­out catal­y­sis, he said, “[o]ur satel­lites could not be maneu­vered, our autos would pour out all the nox­ious chem­i­cals we’ve spent years guard­ing against. Our tele­phone links with the rest of the world would be seri­ous­ly imped­ed.”

In 1975, in the wake of the first oil cri­sis, Boudart and two asso­ciates found­ed Cat­alyt­i­ca in San­ta Clara, Cal­i­for­nia, which worked on high­ly com­plex cat­alyt­ic prob­lems for petro­chem­i­cal, chem­i­cal, and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal firms as well as gov­ern­ment agen­cies. He served as a con­sul­tant to numer­ous well-­-known com­pa­nies.

[Cat­alyt­i­ca] start­ed in the catal­y­sis con­sult­ing field, a ser­vice made clear­ly nec­es­sary by the oil cri­sis,” Boudart said at the time. “One of the crit­i­cal areas was in syn­thet­ic fuels.”

Guid­ing force
Acco­lades and awards were show­ered on Boudart through­out his life, but par­tic­u­lar­ly in the lat­er years of his career, when the scale of his impact became clear.

In 1985, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Utah host­ed a five-­-day sym­po­sium on catal­y­sis sole­ly in Boudart’s hon­or. In 2004, the Jour­nal of Phys­i­cal Chem­istry ded­i­cat­ed an entire issue to Boudart’s lega­cy.

In their intro­duc­tion, the journal’s edi­tors wrote, “Michel Boudart has been the guid­ing force in the field of het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis for more than forty years. He was known for ele­gant­ly stat­ed con­cepts and his elu­ci­da­tion of cat­alyt­ic sites, his exper­i­men­tal stud­ies of new cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als, and the activ­i­ties of [his] many stu­dents and col­lab­o­ra­tors …”

The jour­nal cit­ed his fore­most achieve­ment as the quan­tifi­ca­tion of catal­y­sis as rig­or­ous sequences of ele­men­tary steps. He focused atten­tion on the need to report reac­tion rates eval­u­at­ed under the most rig­or­ous assess­ment tech­niques avail­able and he intro­duced the con­cept of turnover rate – the num­ber of mol­e­cules con­vert­ed per site per sec­ond. He then per­fect­ed pre­cise pro­to­cols for accu­rate mea­sure­ment of reac­tions.

Boudart’s insis­tence on rig­or­ous col­lec­tion and report­ing of data proved invalu­able in com­par­ing data gen­er­at­ed by dif­fer­ent lab­o­ra­to­ries through­out the world and enabled many sub­se­quent advances in the field. His vision, lead­er­ship, and wis­dom were cred­it­ed as a major force in bring­ing catal­y­sis to a point where the design of spe­cif­ic cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als for envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, pro­duc­tion of chem­i­cals, and ener­gy con­ver­sion process­es became pos­si­ble.

In 2006, the Dan­ish com­pa­ny Hal­dor Top­søe spon­sored The Michel Boudart Award for the Advance­ment of Catal­y­sis, which is admin­is­tered joint­ly by the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties.

Profound legacy

 
Michel Boudart was born on 18 June 1924 in Brus­sels, Bel­gium. In 1940, as Hitler’s Panz­er divi­sions blitzkrieged his home­land, Boudart was just 16. He had been accept­ed to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lou­vain, but the uni­ver­si­ty was closed due to the war.

In order not to be draft­ed or sent to Ger­man fac­to­ries, Boudart worked as a vol­un­teer stretch­er-­-bear­er for the Red Cross. Mean­while, he had pri­vate tutor­ing to pre­pare for Lou­vain. When the uni­ver­si­ty reopened, Boudart grad­u­at­ed in three years at the top of every class, save math­e­mat­ics, where he was out­done only by his dear friend, the late Pro­fes­sor Rene de Voge­laere of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley.

Boudart earned his B.S. at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lou­vain in 1944 and his M.S. in 1947. He then left Bel­gium to attend Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, where he took his PhD in chem­istry in 1950. “He and his wife Mari­na were born in Bel­gium and were knight­ed by the crown, but Amer­i­ca was their adopt­ed home,” said Acrivos. “Their chil­dren are thor­ough­ly Amer­i­can.”

After earn­ing his doc­tor­ate, Boudart held fac­ul­ty posi­tions at Prince­ton until 1961 and, for three years, at Berke­ley, before join­ing the Stan­ford fac­ul­ty in 1964. He was Chair of the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at Stan­ford from 1975 to 1978. He also held vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor­ships at the Uni­ver­si­ties of Lou­vain, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, and Paris. He became pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus in 1994.

Boudart authored or coau­thored over 280 jour­nal arti­cles and served on the edi­to­r­i­al boards of at least ten jour­nals. His book, Kinet­ics of Chem­i­cal Process­es, is a stan­dard ref­er­ence and was trans­lat­ed into Japan­ese, Span­ish, and French. His book, Kinet­ics of Het­ero­ge­neous Cat­alyt­ic Process­es, writ­ten with G. Dje­ga-­-Mari­adas­sou, was pub­lished in French in 1982 and trans­lat­ed to Eng­lish in 1984. He was coed­i­tor-­- in-­-chief of Catal­y­sis Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing, a series of twelve vol­umes.

Boudart was recip­i­ent of numer­ous awards, among them the Wil­helm Award in Chem­i­cal Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing from the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chem­i­cal Engi­neers (1974), the Kendall Award (1977) and the Mur­phee Award (1985) from the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety, and the Chem­i­cal Pio­neer Award (1991) of the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Chemists.

His elec­tion to both the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ence and the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing were reflec­tions of Boudart’s lead­er­ship and his sci­en­tif­ic grav­i­tas. He was like­wise a Fel­low of the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence, the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Arts and Sci­ences, and the Cal­i­for­nia Acad­e­my of Sci­ences. He was a for­eign mem­ber of the Acad­e­mia Royale des Sci­ences, des Let­tres et des Beaux-­-Arts de Bel­gique and its Roy­al Bel­gian Acad­e­my Coun­cil for Applied Sci­ences.

Boudart received hon­orary doc­tor­ates from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Liege, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ghent, and the Insti­tut Nation­al Poly­tech­nique de Lor­raine.

He held four patents

 
Boudart is sur­vived by a daugh­ter, Iris Har­ris, of Whit­ti­er, Calif.; three sons, Marc, of Aptos, Calif.; Bau­douin, of Ather­ton, Calif; and Philip, of Palo Alto; and grand­chil­dren Mari­na and Clint Har­ris; and Jesse, Louise, and Noel­la Boudart. His wife, Mari­na d’Haese Boudart, died in 2009. A sec­ond daugh­ter, Dominique, died in child­hood.
 
Down­load PDF doc­u­ment: Michel Boudart Obit­u­ary

In Memoriam: Edmond I. Ko (1952–2012)

Edmond Ko

“Edmond Ko was Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Engi­neer­ing Edu­ca­tion Inno­va­tion and Adjunct Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at The Hong Kong Uni­ver­si­ty of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy (HKUST). Pri­or to that, he served as Vice- Pres­i­dent (Under­grad­u­ate Edu­ca­tion), Dean of Stu­dents, and Pro­fes­sor (Chair) of Chem­istry at City Uni­ver­si­ty of Hong Kong (CityU), and as the Vice Provost for Edu­ca­tion and Pro­fes­sor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­si­ty. Pro­fes­sor Ko received his B.S. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. He worked as a Research Fel­low at the Cor­po­rate Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Exxon (1975–76) and held vis­it­ing and guest fac­ul­ty appoint­ments at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley (1987–88), the Hong Kong Uni­ver­si­ty of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy (1995), Cal­i­for­nia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (1996) and Tian­jin Uni­ver­si­ty (since 2002).

Besides being the co-author of over 100 pub­li­ca­tions and co-inven­tor of one U.S. patent in the area of sur­face sci­ence and catal­y­sis, Pro­fes­sor Ko was an accom­plished edu­ca­tor. He received nine teach­ing awards in his career, includ­ing the William H. and Frances S. Ryan Teach­ing Award at Carnegie Mel­lon, the Chem­i­cal Man­u­fac­tur­ers Asso­ci­a­tion Nation­al Cat­a­lyst Award, the W. M. Keck Foun­da­tion Engi­neer­ing Teach­ing Excel­lence Award, the W. E. Wick­enden Award of the Amer­i­can Soci­ety for Engi­neer­ing Edu­ca­tion, and the School of Engi­neer­ing Teach­ing Award at HKUST.

Pro­fes­sor Ko had nine years of aca­d­e­m­ic admin­is­tra­tive expe­ri­ence, with the first two at Carnegie Mel­lon and the last sev­en at CityU. As the key per­son charged to improve edu­ca­tion at these two insti­tu­tions, he direct­ed activ­i­ties in stu­dent recruit­ment and admis­sions, stu­dent devel­op­ment, stu­dent res­i­dence, cur­ricu­lum design, qual­i­ty assur­ance, and fac­ul­ty devel­op­ment. He was par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in devel­op­ing an out­come-based approach to enhance stu­dent learn­ing.

Serv­ing as Chair­man of the Cur­ricu­lum Devel­op­ment Coun­cil and a mem­ber of the Qual­i­ty Assur­ance Coun­cil of the Uni­ver­si­ty Grants Com­mit­tee, Edu­ca­tion Com­mis­sion, and Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Teacher Edu­ca­tion and Qual­i­fi­ca­tions of the HKSAR Gov­ern­ment, Pro­fes­sor Ko was deeply involved in the for­mu­la­tion and imple­men­ta­tion of edu­ca­tion poli­cies in Hong Kong at all lev­els. He was also a coun­cil mem­ber of the Hong Kong Coun­cil for Accred­i­ta­tion of Aca­d­e­m­ic and Voca­tion­al Qual­i­fi­ca­tions and Hong Kong Insti­tute of Edu­ca­tion.

As some­one who has spent about half of his life liv­ing and work­ing in the US and the oth­er half in Hong Kong, Pro­fes­sor Ko was keen­ly aware of the impor­tance of being able to work com­fort­ably and effec­tive­ly across cul­tures. He cre­at­ed many cross-cul­tur­al learn­ing expe­ri­ences for CityU and HKUST stu­dents, includ­ing con­duct­ing work­shops on inter­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion him­self. He also pub­lished 7 books and numer­ous arti­cles on a wide range of edu­ca­tion­al issues in both Eng­lish and Chi­nese since return­ing to Hong Kong in 1998.
 
Source: http://chtl.hkbu.edu.hk/sources/ProfKoBio.pdf

In Memoriam: Jeffrey S. Beck (1962–2012)

Jef­frey Scott Beck

Jef­frey Scott Beck, Ph.D, passed away on April 7, 2012, with his wife, his sis­ter, his moth­er-in-law and close friends at his side. He was 49. It is with great sor­row that we mourn his unex­pect­ed and quite too ear­ly depar­ture.

Jeff was born on Octo­ber 23, 1962 to Irwin and Leila Beck in Brook­lyn, New York. He was a vibrant ball of fire with the ded­i­ca­tion and intel­lect to make an ever last­ing impact in our soci­ety. He earned his doc­tor­ate in Inor­gan­ic Chem­istry from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia in 1989, true to his high school pre­dic­tion. Jeff was a cre­ative and pro­lif­ic inven­tor, an inspi­ra­tional leader, a devot­ed hus­band and friend, and a renowned sci­en­tist and engi­neer in his field. The loves of his life were his wife Lisa and sis­ter Shari, game-chang­ing inno­va­tion, art col­lec­tion, and his dogs Pharaoh and Mon­ty.

Jeff’s pro­fes­sion­al career began at Mobil’s Cen­tral Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry, imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing his Ph. D.  Through­out his career, Jeff made out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the dis­cov­ery and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of nov­el cat­a­lysts and process­es for the pro­duc­tion of key petro­chem­i­cals and clean fuels. His col­leagues describe Jeff as an inspi­ra­tional vision­ary who had the uncan­ny abil­i­ty to see where the puck was going to be. His ground­break­ing research on “liq­uid-crys­tal tem­plat­ing” led to the dis­cov­ery of an entire­ly new class of tun­able meso­porous mate­ri­als, M41S, with pore sizes in the range of 16 to 100 Å.  This dis­cov­ery is rec­og­nized as a major inno­va­tion in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty and has spawned a new field of mate­ri­als chem­istry. Tech­nolo­gies based on Jef­f’s inno­v­a­tive and prac­ti­cal inven­tions also rev­o­lu­tion­ized the pro­duc­tion of key petro­chem­i­cals, includ­ing para-xylene (used in the pro­duc­tion of poly­ester fiber and PET plas­tics), via advanced cat­a­lysts and process­es.  Jeff was rec­og­nized for his excel­lence in catal­y­sis and mate­ri­als with numer­ous nation­al and inter­na­tion­al awards, includ­ing the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing (one of the high­est pro­fes­sion­al dis­tinc­tions accord­ed an engi­neer), the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Society’s Houdry Award (accord­ed to the most sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to indus­tri­al catal­y­sis), the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Society’s Heroes of Chem­istry Award, and the Inter­na­tion­al Zeo­lite Association’s Breck Award (accord­ed to the most sig­nif­i­cant advance in the field of micro-and meso-porous mate­ri­als).  He was author of near­ly 75 US patents, pub­lished pro­lif­i­cal­ly, and fre­quent­ly deliv­ered invit­ed lec­tures at acclaimed uni­ver­si­ties and con­fer­ences world­wide.  Jeff left an indeli­ble mark not only in research, where he led ExxonMobil’s pres­ti­gious Cor­po­rate Strate­gic Research, but also in sev­er­al assign­ments in the busi­ness, includ­ing Tech­ni­cal Man­ag­er at the Bay­town Refin­ery, and Poly­eth­yl­ene Glob­al Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er.

Though tak­en from this world quite too soon, Jef­f’s loved ones can find com­fort in know­ing that he lived his life ful­ly and the way he want­ed. He demand­ed excel­lence, did not sit still for medi­oc­rity, and inspired all who were for­tu­nate enough to come to know him. Jeff found his hap­pi­est moments spend­ing time with his beloved wife Lisa, and his dogs Pharaoh and Mon­ty. His fam­i­ly, friends, and col­leagues will remem­ber him as a remark­able indi­vid­ual. He has tak­en in his ear­ly jour­ney a part of each of us. We feel blessed to have had him with us. Jeff is sur­vived by his wife Lisa, par­ents Irwin and Leila, sis­ter Shari, and broth­er Richard.

Please share sym­pa­thies, mem­o­ries, and con­do­lences online at www.mem.com.
In lieu of flow­ers, Lisa has request­ed that dona­tions be made to Best Friends Ani­mal Soci­ety, www.bestfriends.org, or any oth­er ani­mal res­cue orga­ni­za­tion.

In Memoriam: D. Wayne Goodman (1945–2012)

Pro­fes­sor D. Wayne Good­man

Pro­fes­sor D. Wayne Good­man

With great sad­ness, we report that Pro­fes­sor D. Wayne Good­man died on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 27, 2012 at the age of 66, after a lengthy and dif­fi­cult bat­tle with can­cer. His con­tri­bu­tions to the under­stand­ing of catal­y­sis and to the peo­ple who worked in this field were many in num­ber and very deep in impact.

Wayne received his Ph.D. in Phys­i­cal Chem­istry in 1975 at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, Austin, under the super­vi­sion of M.J.S. Dewar, where his research includ­ed some of the ear­li­est mea­sure­ments and full analy­sis of the pho­to­elec­tron spec­tra of inor­gan­ic mol­e­cules. After com­plet­ing his Ph.D., Wayne won a NATO fel­low­ship, and then became an NRC Research Fel­low at the Nation­al Bureau of Stan­dards near Wash­ing­ton, DC. At the “Bureau” (now NIST), he worked under the super­vi­sion of two pio­neers in the field of sur­face sci­ence, Ted Madey and John Yates. Among sev­er­al impor­tant accom­plish­ments dur­ing his tenure there, Wayne pro­duced land­mark pub­li­ca­tions on the met­al-cat­alyzed CO metha­na­tion reac­tion. Using well-defined sin­gle crys­tal mod­el cat­a­lysts of Ni and Ru and a nov­el, UHV-attached ‘high’ pres­sure cat­alyt­ic reac­tor, his work pro­vid­ed con­clu­sive evi­dence that CO metha­na­tion is a struc­ture insen­si­tive reac­tion.

Wayne’s sci­en­tif­ic career took off in the 1980s; these were high­ly pro­duc­tive years that estab­lished him as a lead­ing fig­ure in sur­face sci­ence and het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. At San­dia Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ries in Albu­querque, NM, he iden­ti­fied “long-range” effects of some sur­face mod­i­fiers giv­ing new per­spec­tives on phe­nom­e­na asso­ci­at­ed with poi­son­ing and pro­mo­tion of cat­alyt­ic reac­tions. Wayne also ini­ti­at­ed research efforts focused on the hydrogenol­y­sis of alka­nes, cyclo­hexa­ne dehy­dro­gena­tion, methanol syn­the­sis, CO oxi­da­tion, and NO reduc­tion. His fun­da­men­tal stud­ies con­tin­ued to explore links between sur­face struc­ture and sur­face reac­tiv­i­ty, help­ing to estab­lish an approach fol­lowed by many research groups in sub­se­quent years.

Wayne took a fac­ul­ty posi­tion in the Depart­ment of Chem­istry at Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty in 1988, where he remained, hold­ing the Robert A. Welch Foun­da­tion Chair at the time of his death. The aca­d­e­m­ic envi­ron­ment of Texas A&M added a new dimen­sion to Wayne’s life. It was a joy for him to teach gen­er­al chem­istry to under­grad­u­ates, and Prof. Goodman’s lec­tures became very pop­u­lar among the stu­dents. With­in a few short years, Wayne was also able to estab­lish one of the best lab­o­ra­to­ries for sur­face sci­ence in the Unit­ed States. In the ear­ly 1990s, fol­low­ing work he ini­ti­at­ed at San­dia, his group at A&M per­formed sys­tem­at­ic stud­ies of the phys­i­cal and chem­i­cal prop­er­ties of bimetal­lic sur­faces and strained met­al over­lay­ers. Clear cor­re­la­tions were found between the elec­tron­ic per­tur­ba­tions induced by bimetal­lic bond­ing and vari­a­tions in the chem­i­cal and cat­alyt­ic activ­i­ty of the met­als. After mak­ing many impact­ful dis­cov­er­ies in this area, Wayne shift­ed his atten­tion to the chem­istry of oxide sur­faces and the inter­ac­tion of well-defined met­al nanopar­ti­cles with oxide sup­ports, where he elu­ci­dat­ed key aspects of par­ti­cle size effects in catal­y­sis. His group devel­oped mod­els of metal/oxide inter­faces that have become valu­able tools for imag­ing and imag­in­ing the struc­ture of sup­port­ed het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts. In the late 1990s, his stud­ies of catal­y­sis by sup­port­ed Au nanopar­ti­cles received wide recog­ni­tion, with many papers, cita­tions and invit­ed lec­tures all over the world. He also led ele­gant kinet­ic and spec­tro­scop­ic stud­ies of vinyl acetate syn­the­sis over met­al alloys, unrav­el­ing key phe­nom­e­na for the prepa­ra­tion of oxy­genates.

Wayne pub­lished over 500 papers in sur­face sci­ence and het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis, with near­ly 24,000 cita­tions and an h‑index of 76. His work in these areas over the last 30 years has helped to trans­form catal­y­sis from a pri­mar­i­ly appli­ca­tions-ori­ent­ed dis­ci­pline to a high­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed sci­en­tif­ic enter­prise. For these sci­en­tif­ic accom­plish­ments, Wayne received numer­ous awards and hon­ors. From the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety, he received the Ipati­eff Prize in catal­y­sis (1983), the Kendall Award in Col­loid and Sur­face Chem­istry (1993), the Arthur W. Adam­son Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice in Advance­ment of Sur­face Chem­istry (2002), and the Gabor A. Somor­jai Award for Cre­ative Research in Catal­y­sis (2005). Wayne was a Robert Bur­well Lec­tur­er for the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (1997), and has been elect­ed as a fel­low of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety, the Roy­al Soci­ety of Chem­istry, the Insti­tute of Physics, and the Amer­i­can Vac­u­um Soci­ety. He served as an Asso­ciate Edi­tor of the Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis, and as a mem­ber of the Edi­to­r­i­al Boards of Sur­face Sci­ence, Applied Sur­face Sci­ence, Lang­muir, Catal­y­sis Let­ters, Jour­nal of Mol­e­c­u­lar Catal­y­sis A, Chem­i­cal Physics Let­ters and the Jour­nal of Physics: Con­densed Mat­ter. He also men­tored a large num­ber of grad­u­ate stu­dents and post­docs.

Wayne is sur­vived by his love­ly and gra­cious wife of 44 years, Sandy, of Col­lege Sta­tion, TX; his son, Jac Good­man, son-in-law, Steven Teil­er, grand­son Eitan Teil­er Good­man of Wash­ing­ton, D.C.; his father, Grady Good­man; a broth­er, Garon Good­man; and a sis­ter, Mar­ca­lyn Price.

On a per­son­al note, we both attest to Wayne’s infec­tious enthu­si­asm for sci­ence and life, his nat­ur­al ten­den­cy to forge deep friend­ships with almost every­one he knew, his incred­i­ble sense of humor, and his deep com­mit­ment to his fam­i­ly, friends and insti­tu­tions. His suc­cess­ful efforts to reveal some of “Moth­er Nature’s” close­ly guard­ed secrets were an inspi­ra­tion to all who knew him. As impor­tant­ly, Wayne was a friend to all, who could always be count­ed on to enter­tain, enlight­en, sup­port, and debate. Along with anoth­er friend and col­league, Prof. Charles Mims (Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to), we were hon­ored to ded­i­cate our recent joint pub­li­ca­tion to Wayne in a spe­cial issue of the Jour­nal of Phys­i­cal Chem­istry C (Vol. 114, No. 40, 2010) pub­lished in hon­or of his 65th birth­day. Our acknowl­edg­ment to Wayne in our paper was as fol­lows: “We thank Wayne Good­man for his sci­en­tif­ic inspi­ra­tion, men­tor­ing, and col­lab­o­ra­tion, and for untold num­ber of good times that defy descrip­tion.” We will great­ly miss our friend and men­tor. We know this same sen­ti­ment will be shared by a large frac­tion of the mem­ber­ship of the NACS.

Wayne, thank you for all you did for us, old bud­dy!

Char­lie Camp­bell (Depart­ment of Chem­istry, Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton)
Chuck Peden (Insti­tute for Inte­grat­ed Catal­y­sis, Pacif­ic North­west Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ries)

Memo­r­i­al con­tri­bu­tions may be made to Hos­pice Bra­zos Val­ley at www.hospicebrazosvalley.org. Cards, let­ters and oth­er writ­ten forms of con­do­lences also may be addressed to the Good­man Fam­i­ly in care of the Depart­ment of Chem­istry, Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty, Col­lege Sta­tion, Texas 77843–3255.
 
Note: Some of the above mate­r­i­al was adapt­ed from the Pref­ace to the spe­cial issue of the Jour­nal of Phys­i­cal Chem­istry C (Vol. 114, No. 40, 2010) pub­lished in hon­or of Wayne Goodman’s 65th birth­day. The Pref­ace was authored by Michael Hen­der­son, Chuck Peden, Jose Rodriguez, Janos Szanyi, John Yates, and Fran­cis­co Zaera.

In Memoriam: Jean-Claude Volta (1946–2011)

Jean-Claude Vol­ta was born in Givors near Lyon, France on 3rd March 1946 and died in Lyon on 18th June 2011. He received a chem­i­cal engi­neer degree at the ‘‘Ecole Supérieure de Chimie Indus­trielle de Lyon’’ ESCIL, in 1968 and his ‘‘Doc­tor­at ès Sci­ences’’ in 1973 from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lyon.

His sci­en­tif­ic career was almost entire­ly at the “Insti­tut de Recherch­es sur la Catal­yse” IRC, CNRS in Villeur­banne (Lyon), now IRCELYON. His pas­sion for Brazil was quite intense. He col­lab­o­rat­ed in par­tic­u­lar with Pao­lo Gus­ta­vo Pries de Oliv­e­ria and Lucia Appel from INT (Insti­tu­to Nacional de Tec­nolo­gia) in Rio de Janeiro and worked there for one year.

He retired in March 2006 as “Directeur de Recherche au CNRS”, after being at the head of the Oxide group. Every­one will remem­ber him as an enthu­si­as­tic and bril­liant sci­en­tist who con­tributed enor­mous­ly to the sci­en­tif­ic and social life of the Insti­tute over 30 years.

He was award­ed the annu­al award by the Catal­y­sis divi­sion of the French Chem­i­cal Soci­ety in1984 for his major con­tri­bu­tion in ‘‘struc­ture sen­si­tiv­i­ty’’ of metal­lic oxides for cat­alyt­ic selec­tive oxi­da­tion of hydro­car­bons. His case study was MoO3 sin­gle crys­tals.

He has more than 150 pub­li­ca­tions and patents in the field of oxi­da­tion catal­y­sis in which he is world famous. His con­tri­bu­tion to VPO cat­a­lysts for butane oxi­da­tion to male­ic anhy­dride was impor­tant and out­stand­ing. He has devel­oped the spin echo map­ping tech­nique in MAS-NMR with Dr. Alain Tuel (IRCELYON), pio­neered in situ/Operando Raman stud­ies with analy­sis of reac­tants and prod­ucts by GC on line with Pro­fes­sor Ollier at Ecole Cen­trale de Lyon and HR-TEM with Pro­fes­sor Chris Kiely (Uni­ver­si­ty of Liv­er­pool, UK, now at Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty, USA).

Jean-Claude was a found­ing mem­ber of the Euro­pean CONCORDE (CO-ordi­na­tion of Nanos­truc­tured Cat­alyt­ic Oxides Research and Devel­op­ment) net­work and played a vital role in dis­cus­sions lead­ing to its for­ma­tion. A spe­cial issue of the Jour­nal Applied Catal­y­sis A was orga­nized by his friends and col­leagues who want­ed to express their recog­ni­tion to Jean-Claude Vol­ta on the occa­sion of his retire­ment and to cel­e­brate his con­tri­bu­tion to the field of struc­ture sen­si­tiv­i­ty and selec­tive oxi­da­tion in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis.

This note is essen­tial­ly based on the pref­ace of this spe­cial issue.
 
His friends
www.elsevier.com/locate/apcata
Applied Catal­y­sis A: Gen­er­al 325 (2007) 193