By LOUISE STORY
 
John H. Sin­felt, a chem­i­cal engi­neer whose research for an oil com­pa­ny helped lead to the intro­duc­tion of unlead­ed gaso­line and sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tions in air pol­lu­tion, died on May 28 in Mor­ris­town, N.J. He was 80.

The cause was com­pli­ca­tions of con­ges­tive heart fail­ure, his son, Klaus, said.

In the late 1960s and ’70s, the petro­le­um indus­try was under intense pres­sure to pro­duce gaso­line with­out lead, which con­tributed to air pol­lu­tion and posed sub­stan­tial health risks, par­tic­u­lar­ly to chil­dren. Lead was added to gaso­line to raise octane lev­els, which helped keep engines from knock­ing.

The Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency issued reg­u­la­tions call­ing for a grad­ual reduc­tion in the lead con­tent of gaso­line in 1973.

Dr. Sin­felt was work­ing for the Stan­dard Oil Devel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (now Exxon Mobil Research and Engi­neer­ing), where he spe­cial­ized in devel­op­ing tech­niques to speed up chem­i­cal reac­tions. While the entire indus­try was pur­su­ing the goal, said Stu­art Soled, dis­tin­guished research asso­ciate at Exxon Mobil, it was Dr. Sin­felt who came up with a cat­alyt­ic process using a com­bi­na­tion of two met­als — plat­inum and irid­i­um —allow­ing refin­ers to inex­pen­sive­ly pro­duce high-octane gaso­line with­out adding lead.

He patent­ed that method, and his ideas became impor­tant in fur­ther research into chem­i­cal reac­tions, said Enrique Igle­sia, who worked with Dr. Sin­felt and who is now a pro­fes­sor of chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley.

“He was a fair­ly deep sci­en­tist, almost aca­d­e­m­ic in his nature, who made con­tri­bu­tions that oth­er peo­ple could fol­low,” Pro­fes­sor Igle­sia said.

For Dr. Sinfelt’s break­through, Pres­i­dent Jim­my Carter pre­sent­ed him with the President’s Nation­al Medal of Sci­ence at a White House cer­e­mo­ny in 1980. The cita­tion rec­og­nized his work “lead­ing to the devel­op­ment of new cat­a­lyst sys­tems for the pro­duc­tion of low-lead gaso­line.”

Dr. Sin­felt received more than 40 patents, and he was a mem­ber of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences and the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Arts and Sci­ences.

John Hen­ry Sin­felt was born on Feb. 18, 1931, in Mun­son, Pa. He grad­u­at­ed from Penn State and com­plet­ed his master’s and Ph.D. in chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois. In the mid-1950s he joined the Stan­dard Oil Devel­op­ment Com­pa­ny.

Besides his son, he is sur­vived by his wife, Muriel, and a broth­er, Fred­er­ick Sein­felt.

Dr. Sin­felt was pleased that he had helped improve the nation’s air qual­i­ty. “I can’t say he was an envi­ron­men­tal­ist, but he was very proud that the work he did helped the envi­ron­ment,” his son said.
 
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/10/business/10sinfelt.html?_r=2&hpw

David Lawrence Trimm con­tributed to the progress of catal­y­sis through his pro­fes­sion­al work for almost five decades. He grad­u­at­ed from Uni­ver­si­ty of Exeter and got his PhD in 1961 and after a post­doc peri­od at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege and at Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go he was with Impe­r­i­al Col­lege as lec­tur­er in the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Chem­i­cal Tech­nol­o­gy (1963–1976).

Dur­ing David’s ear­ly years at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege, he became one of the pio­neers in study­ing and explain­ing the mech­a­nism of car­bon for­ma­tion on met­al cat­a­lysts. This result­ed in a num­ber of impor­tant pub­li­ca­tions and PhD degrees. His expe­ri­ence was applied in stud­ies of the com­plex mech­a­nism of coke for­ma­tion in pyrol­y­sis (steam crack­ing) with ear­ly work on cou­pling of homo­ge­neous and het­ero­ge­neous reac­tions. Lat­er stud­ies dealt with cat­alyt­ic com­bus­tion with a view to prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions and fuel con­ver­sion for fuel cell dri­ven cars. David was present­ly engaged in research on mak­ing syn­fu­els via acety­lene. His achieve­ments in catal­y­sis are reflect­ed by a large num­ber of papers (286) many of which are high­ly cit­ed. David’s atti­tude to catal­y­sis was focused on the appli­ca­tions as reflect­ed by his ambi­tious book “Design of Indus­tri­al Cat­a­lysts” (1980).

After a few years as pro­fes­sor in Trond­heim (1976–1979) David moved to Aus­tralia which became his home. He con­tin­ued the sci­en­tif­ic work as pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of New South Wales where he func­tioned as Head of School of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Indus­tri­al Chem­istry in two peri­ods (in total 18 years) until he was appoint­ed to the pres­ti­gious posi­tion as Sci­en­tia Pro­fes­sor in 2001. At the same time he con­tributed to the analy­sis of the fea­si­bil­i­ty of GTL projects for Aus­tralia through his work at CSIRO (2000-) where he was appoint­ed CSIRO Fel­low in 2007 and as advi­sor to the gov­ern­ment in numer­ous com­mit­tees. David mas­tered the abil­i­ty to be the link between sci­ence, indus­try and pol­i­cy mak­ing bod­ies.

David served as region­al edi­tor for Applied Catal­y­sis and was on the advi­so­ry board for sev­er­al jour­nals in the field. David was one of the founders of the Nat­ur­al Gas Con­ver­sion Sym­posia (NGCS) in 1987 and he received the NGCS Award in 2007; he was also behind the APCAT con­fer­ences and instru­men­tal in cre­at­ing APCAS orga­ni­za­tion (Asia Pacif­ic Asso­ci­a­tion of Catal­y­sis) in 2004.

David was strict on sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples but had a great heart when deal­ing with peo­ple. He was an inspir­ing team leader and with his sense of humor and his charm he was able to cre­ate a strong world­wide net­work of friends many of whom have enjoyed his and Gabi’s hos­pi­tal­i­ty in their home at Wat­son Bay.

We are many who will miss David.

It is with great sad­ness that we announce the pass­ing of George W. Roberts, Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of Chem­i­cal and Bio­mol­e­c­u­lar Engi­neer­ing, North Car­oli­na State Uni­ver­si­ty. George suc­cumbed from pan­cre­at­ic can­cer on 5 April 2010 in Raleigh, North Car­oli­na. He fought bold­ly to spare his fam­i­ly the excep­tion­al pain of this ordeal.

Prof. Roberts made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions in both the indus­tri­al and aca­d­e­m­ic aspects of catal­y­sis espe­cial­ly in under­stand­ing the behav­ior of cat­alyt­ic reac­tors (cat­alyt­ic reac­tion engi­neer­ing). He strong­ly encour­aged his stu­dents to study sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems fac­ing indus­tri­al needs which broad­ened their edu­ca­tion and pre­pared them for future careers.

George was born in Newark, New Jer­sey. He received the B.ChE. degree from Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty in 1961 and the Sc.D. degree in chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing in 1965 from Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy. His research advi­sor at MIT was Prof. Charles N. Sat­ter­field, a dis­tin­guished schol­ar in the field of catal­y­sis and the author of four books deal­ing with catal­y­sis and cat­alyt­ic process­es. From 1965 to 1969, Prof. Roberts was a Research Engi­neer and lat­er a Projects Super­vi­sor with the Rohm and Haas Com­pa­ny in Philadel­phia. He then joined the Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty (St. Louis) as an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor, where he found­ed and direct­ed the Chem­i­cal Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing Lab­o­ra­to­ry. He received the Dis­tin­guished Fac­ul­ty Award from Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in 1971.

Prof. Roberts joined Engel­hard in Men­lo Park, NJ in 1972 as Man­ag­er of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Research, and was respon­si­ble for lead­ing sev­er­al pro­grams that result­ed in the devel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of new cat­a­lysts and cat­alyt­ic process­es, In the mid-1970’s he head­ed a research team that devel­oped a new Pt/Re cat­a­lyst for naph­tha reform­ing with sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er sta­bil­i­ty than its com­mer­cial pre­de­ces­sor. His team also devel­oped an improved aro­mat­ic iso­mer­iza­tion cat­a­lyst for the pro­duc­tion of xylenes, based on mol­e­c­u­lar sieve tech­nol­o­gy. He then led a research effort in selec­tive hydro­gena­tion of var­i­ous streams derived from steam crack­ing of liq­ue­fied petro­le­um gas (LPG) and naph­tha. Two new process­es were com­mer­cial­ized. He led the devel­op­ment of a new, low-pol­lu­tion com­bus­tion process based on com­bin­ing cat­alyt­ic and homo­ge­neous (ther­mal) com­bus­tion. His group at Engel­hard devel­oped the cat­alyt­ic tech­nol­o­gy that result­ed in the suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion of selec­tive oxi­da­tion of CO in the pres­ence of H2 as a means for debug­ging ammo­nia plants. This process was suc­cess­ful­ly oper­at­ed in sev­er­al domes­tic ammo­nia plants begin­ning in the late-1970’s. More­over, the research lead­ing to this process pro­vid­ed a sound tech­ni­cal foun­da­tion for the renewed study of selec­tive oxi­da­tion of CO, as part of the pro­duc­tion of H2 for use in fuel cells being used today.

From 1977 to 1989, Prof. Roberts held var­i­ous posi­tions in tech­nol­o­gy man­age­ment at Air Prod­ucts and Chem­i­cals, Inc. in Allen­town, PA. His two most notable achieve­ments were lead­ing the teams that devel­oped and com­mer­cial­ized the COPETM process for debot­tle­neck­ing Claus sul­fur recov­ery plants and the LPMeO­HTM process for methanol syn­the­sis. The COPETM process was first com­mer­cial­ized by East­man Chem­i­cal at its coal gasi­fi­ca­tion facil­i­ty in Kingsport, TN. This process has been suc­cess­ful­ly used in a num­ber of Claus plants, and won the 1987 Kirk­patrick Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Achieve­ment Award from Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing mag­a­zine.

In 1989, he joined North Car­oli­na State Uni­ver­si­ty as Pro­fes­sor and Head of the Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment. He stepped down as Depart­ment Head in 1994 to devote him­self to research and teach­ing. Prof. Roberts received an Out­stand­ing Teacher Award in 2001–2002 and the Alcoa Foun­da­tion Engi­neer­ing Research Award in 2006. Although he offi­cial­ly retired from the Uni­ver­si­ty in 2007, becom­ing Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus, George con­tin­ued to be active in research and recent­ly pub­lished a text­book. Chem­i­cal Reac­tions and Chem­i­cal Reac­tors (John Wiley & Sons, 2008) is designed pri­mar­i­ly for the chem­i­cal reac­tion engi­neer­ing (“kinet­ics”) course that is required in almost every chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing cur­ricu­lum, inter­na­tion­al­ly. Prof. Roberts’ book rec­og­nizes explic­it­ly that 80–90% of indus­tri­al reac­tions involve catal­y­sis, pri­mar­i­ly het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. There­fore, het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis is intro­duced very ear­ly, and the book con­tains exten­sive treat­ments of the fun­da­men­tals of cat­alyt­ic kinet­ics and the role of trans­port effects in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis.

Prof. Roberts had more than 75 ref­er­eed jour­nal pub­li­ca­tions, 11 ref­er­eed chap­ters in books, and 20 issued US patents on top­ics such as cat­alyt­ic com­bus­tion, methanol syn­the­sis, hydro­gen gen­er­a­tion, and cat­alyt­ic poly­mer hydro­gena­tion. His most recent catal­y­sis research focused on three very nov­el and chal­leng­ing prob­lems:

1. Hydro­gena­tion of var­i­ous poly­mers with pre­cious met­al cat­a­lysts in order to cre­ate nov­el poly­mer­ic mate­ri­als that are dif­fi­cult to syn­the­size by poly­mer­iza­tion of the appro­pri­ate monomers.
2. The direct reac­tion of car­bon diox­ide with methane to form acetic acid, and the direct reac­tion of car­bon diox­ide, methane and acety­lene to form vinyl acetate. This is a poten­tial­ly impor­tant approach to recy­cling car­bon diox­ide by using it as a car­bon source in chem­i­cal syn­the­sis.
3. Cat­alyt­ic reac­tions in super­crit­i­cal flu­ids.

George was a qui­et leader of our com­mu­ni­ty and will be great­ly missed. His con­tri­bu­tions will con­tin­ue to influ­ence new cat­alyt­ic research.
 
Pre­pared by Robert J. Far­rauto, BASF (bob.farrauto@basf.com) 10 April 2010
Sub­mit­ted by H. Hen­ry Lamb, NCSU (lamb@ncsu.edu) 22 April 2010

Pro­fes­sor Jerzy Haber (1930–2010), an out­stand­ing sci­en­tist, Leader and Tutor of many gen­er­a­tions of Pol­ish chemists, a remark­able organ­is­er of research, died on Jan­u­ary 1, 2010. He was an inter­na­tion­al­ly acclaimed spe­cial­ist in sol­id state chem­istry, catal­y­sis and sur­face phe­nom­e­na who cre­at­ed and direct­ed for many years the Insti­tute of Catal­y­sis and Sur­face Chem­istry of Pol­ish Acad­e­my of Sci­ences in Krakow.

Jerzy Haber was born on May 7, 1930 in Krakow and linked with this city his entire pro­fes­sion­al and pri­vate life. Here, in 1951, he grad­u­at­ed in chem­istry from the Fac­ul­ty of Math­e­mat­ics, Physics and Chem­istry of the Jagiel­lon­ian Uni­ver­si­ty. After grad­u­a­tion, he took posi­tion of a research assis­tant at the AGH Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy in Krakow, work­ing on physi­co-chem­i­cal prop­er­ties of tran­si­tion met­al oxides in the research group of Pro­fes­sor Adam Bielañs­ki. In his research, he demon­strat­ed a cor­re­la­tion between changes in their elec­tron prop­er­ties and cat­alyt­ic activ­i­ty (A.Bielañski, J. Dereñ, J. Haber, Nature 179 (1957) 668). This was one of the first exper­i­men­tal con­fir­ma­tions of the elec­tron the­o­ry of catal­y­sis in the world. His doc­tor­al the­sis ‘A rela­tion­ship between the elec­tric con­duc­tiv­i­ty of a work­ing cat­a­lyst and its cat­alyt­ic activ­i­ty’, accom­plished at the age of 26, con­cerned the same sub­ject.
In 1960–1961, he stayed as a post­doc­tor­al fel­low at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol, where he under­took with Pro­fes­sor F. S. Stone a pio­neer­ing at that time research on the inter­pre­ta­tion of pho­toad­sorp­tion and pho­to­catal­y­sis on the basis of the crys­tal field the­o­ry, the results of which have been quot­ed until today in the text­books and mono­graphs (J. Haber, F.S. Stone, Trans. Fara­day Soc. 59 (1963) 19).

On his return to Poland, he con­tin­ued his work at the AGH Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy until 1968 first as a research fel­low and then as an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor. He was an excel­lent lec­tur­er. His lec­tures on phys­i­cal chem­istry attract­ed crowds of stu­dents of var­i­ous depart­ments of the uni­ver­si­ty.

In 1968, he was appoint­ed direc­tor of an inde­pen­dent Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Catal­y­sis and Sur­face Chem­istry of Pol­ish Acad­e­my of Sci­ences (since 1978, the Insti­tute). The Insti­tute was Jerzy Haber’s life accom­plish­ment. He mas­ter­mind­ed the con­cept of cre­at­ing a plat­form for a mutu­al exchange of ideas and research in the entire area of the phys­i­cal chem­istry of gas-sol­id, gas-liq­uid and sol­id-sol­id inter­faces. He stood behind the spec­tac­u­lar devel­op­ment of the Insti­tute which start­ed in a few rent­ed premis­es with 28 mem­bers of staff, includ­ing just 5 in catal­y­sis sen­su stricte, and attained dur­ing 30 years its own impres­sive build­ing, unique research equip­ment and almost 100 mem­bers of staff, includ­ing 15 pro­fes­sors and asso­ci­at­ed pro­fes­sors, spe­cial­is­ing in diverse aspects of catal­y­sis, sur­face chem­istry and col­loids. In spite of dif­fi­cult times of polit­i­cal­ly divid­ed Europe, the Insti­tute has become an ele­ment in the inter­na­tion­al research net­work, a place of free flow of ideas, open to con­tacts with the entire world, a true cen­tre of excel­lence in its area.

At the Insti­tute, Jerzy Haber ini­ti­at­ed and devel­oped broad research, both fun­da­men­tal and applied, in diverse areas of het­ero­ge­neous and homoge­nous catal­y­sis, as well as sol­id state chem­istry applied to catal­y­sis. In par­tic­u­lar, his research con­cerned oxide sys­tems – cat­a­lysts of the selec­tive oxi­da­tion process­es, as well as zeo­lites, cat­a­lysts based on met­al­lo-organ­ic com­plex­es, and cat­a­lysts used in the envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, to men­tion just the most impor­tant research direc­tions.

The inves­ti­ga­tions have led to the for­mu­la­tion of a the­o­ry of cat­alyt­ic oxi­da­tion of hydro­car­bons and have intro­duced into the world lit­er­a­ture the con­cept of elec­trophilic and nucle­ophilic oxi­da­tion. The clas­si­fi­ca­tion revealed a cor­re­la­tion between the cat­alyt­ic prop­er­ties of tran­si­tion met­al oxides and their struc­ture, and has become foun­da­tion of the sci­ence-based selec­tion of the cat­a­lysts. Pro­fes­sor Haber demon­strat­ed that the abil­i­ty of oxides of tran­si­tion met­als of groups V – VII to add selec­tive­ly oxy­gen atoms to the hydro­car­bon chain of an organ­ic mol­e­cule is linked with the phe­nom­e­non of crys­tal shear­ing. Inves­ti­ga­tions of sin­gle-crys­tal oxide cat­a­lysts have led to a gen­er­al con­clu­sion that the con­sec­u­tive ele­men­tary steps of the cat­alyt­ic reac­tion may pro­ceed on dif­fer­ent crys­tal faces (struc­ture-sen­si­tive reac­tions).

Jerzy Haber was first in the world to ini­ti­ate research on the descrip­tion of ele­men­tary steps of the reac­tion of cat­alyt­ic oxi­da­tion of hydro­car­bons using quan­tum chem­i­cal meth­ods. They revealed that the reac­tion path depends on the ori­en­ta­tion of react­ing mol­e­cules one with respect to anoth­er and to the cat­a­lyst sur­face which under­goes restruc­tur­ing.

The inves­ti­ga­tions on the homoge­nous reac­tions of hydro­car­bon oxi­da­tion with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of tran­si­tion met­al por­phyrins as mod­el cat­a­lysts, allowed reveal­ing role of the elec­tron struc­ture of tran­si­tion met­al ions as active cen­tres for these reac­tions, and for­mu­lat­ing the mech­a­nism of ini­ti­a­tion of the chain reac­tions and the chain devel­op­ment step.

Jerzy Haber was active­ly com­mit­ted to organ­is­ing research in Poland, among oth­er by coor­di­nat­ing the nation­al research pro­gramme in catal­y­sis. Since 1971 he was full pro­fes­sor in chem­i­cal sci­ences, since 1973 a cor­re­spond­ing mem­ber and since1983 a full mem­ber of the Pol­ish Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, since 1990 a mem­ber of the Pre­sid­i­um of the Acad­e­my, Pres­i­dent of the Krakow Branch of the Acad­e­my since 2003, a full mem­ber of the Pol­ish Acad­e­my of Arts and Sci­ences since 1991, the direc­tor of its Class of Math­e­mat­ics, Physics and Chem­istry, 1999–2008, a found­ing mem­ber of the Pol­ish Club of Catal­y­sis and its Pres­i­dent, 1992–2007, a mem­ber of Research Coun­cil to the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic, 1991–95, a mem­ber of the Cen­tral Com­mis­sion for Research Degrees, 1975–81 and 2000-06, and a mem­ber of the Nation­al Coun­cil of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion, 1991–2002. For his research and admin­is­tra­tive activ­i­ty, he was award­ed among oth­ers the doc­tor­ate hon­oris causa by the Marie Curie-Sklodows­ka Uni­ver­si­ty in Lublin, the Research Prize of the Prime Min­is­ter, the Com­man­der Cross with Star of the Order of Polo­nia Resti­tu­ta.

Excel­lent eru­di­tion, organ­i­sa­tion­al tal­ents, flu­en­cy in sev­er­al lan­guages, friend­ly atti­tude to all, final­ly ease in estab­lish­ing con­tacts and social skills made Jerzy Haber a val­ued mem­ber of many inter­na­tion­al bod­ies and a pop­u­lar lec­tur­er. He hold a num­ber of func­tions in inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions and organ­i­sa­tions: among oth­ers Pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee of Reac­tiv­i­ty of Solids, 1976–84, Vice-Pres­i­dent of the Com­mis­sion on Col­loid and Sur­face Chem­istry Includ­ing Catal­y­sis IUPAC, 1977–87, Pres­i­dent of the Sub­com­mit­tee of Cat­a­lysts Char­ac­ter­i­za­tion IUPAC, 1978–90, Pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tion­al Coun­cil of Catal­y­sis, 1988–92 and Vice-Pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties, 1997–99. The French Chem­i­cal Soci­ety award­ed him the Pierre et Marie Curie Prize and the Ger­man Soci­ety of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Biotech­nol­o­gy — the medal of Alwin Mit­tasch. He was doc­tor hon­oris causa of the Uni­ver­sité Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, mem­ber of the Acad­e­mia Euro­pea and the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ence of Ukraine. He received the Order of the Aca­d­e­m­ic Palms of the French Repub­lic.

Jerzy Haber was wide­ly acclaimed in Poland and world­wide as author of sci­en­tif­ic papers: he pub­lished near­ly 530 orig­i­nal papers and 6 books, received more than 50 patents, pre­sent­ed 115 ple­nary and invit­ed lec­tures at inter­na­tion­al con­gress­es. He super­vised 30 doc­tor­al projects and was mem­ber of edi­to­r­i­al boards of many sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals, includ­ing the most impor­tant ones for his research area: Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis (1976–82), Catal­y­sis Reviews, Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing (1976–85), Reac­tion Kinet­ics and Catal­y­sis Let­ters (od 1976), Jour­nal of Chem­i­cal Tech­nol­o­gy and Biotech­nol­o­gy (since 1979), Pol­ish Jour­nal of Applied Chem­istry (since 1979), Revue de Chimie Minerale/European Jour­nal of Sol­id State Chemistry/Solid State Sci­ences (since 1980), Applied Catal­y­sis (1981–84), Bul­letin of the Pol­ish Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, Chem­i­cal Series (1981–2004), Reac­tiv­i­ty of Solids (1985–90), Catal­y­sis Let­ters (since 1987), Bul­letin des Sociétés Chim­iques Belges (1991–1997), Pol­ish Jour­nal of Chem­istry (1992–1996), Comptes Ren­dus de l’A­cad­e­mie de Sci­ences, Paris (since 1998).

Cit­i­zen of the world, invit­ed to con­gress­es and meet­ings to all cor­ners of the globe, vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor of the uni­ver­si­ties in Bel­gium, France, Japan and Cana­da, he remained dur­ing all his life close­ly linked to his native Poland and city of Krakow. Enthu­si­as­tic con­nois­seur of art and his­toric mon­u­ments, he ini­ti­at­ed at his Insti­tute mod­ern research on the dete­ri­o­ra­tion mech­a­nisms and pro­tec­tion of his­toric objects and sup­port­ed the activ­i­ties of the Coun­cil of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion in Krakow. A reg­u­lar con­cert- and art exhi­bi­tion-goer. From his trav­els all over the world, he was return­ing to his beau­ti­ful house in Krakow, gar­den, dogs, exquis­ite library, col­lec­tion of prints and maps, with a pro­fes­sion­al col­lec­tion of views of his city. Charm­ing host of social meet­ings, pos­sess­ing a rare tal­ent of lis­ten­ing to the oth­ers. He is sur­vived by his wife Han­na, an archi­tect and art-lover, a con­stant com­pan­ion in all his under­tak­ings.
 
Writ­ten by friends
Feb­ru­ary 2010

Eric Gérard Joseph Der­ouane died on 17th March 2008 from a heart attack in his home in Luz, Lagos, Por­tu­gal. With him, the Catal­y­sis Com­mu­ni­ty has lost one of its strongest and bril­liant sci­en­tists.

Born on 4th July 1944 at Péruwelz (Hain­aut), Bel­gium, Eric Der­ouane obtained a Licence degree at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Liège, B (1965), a Mas­ter of Arts (MA) degree in Chem­istry in Prof. J. Turkevich’s lab­o­ra­to­ry at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, USA (1966) and a Doc­tor­at ès Sci­ences (PhD) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Liège, B (1968), includ­ing a one year (1966–1967) in France at the “Ser­vice de Physique du Solide et de Réso­nance Mag­né­tique, CEN Saclay” in Prof. A. Abragam’s lab­o­ra­to­ry. He stayed a year (1969–1970) in USA at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty as vis­it­ing Schol­ar in Prof. M. Boudart’s lab­o­ra­to­ry. He became Research Assis­tant of the “Fonds Nation­al de la Recherche Sci­en­tifique” (FNRS) and Lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Liège, B (1969–1973). In 1973, he was appoint­ed Pro­fes­sor at the “Fac­ultés Uni­ver­si­taires Notre-Dame de la Paix” (FUNDP) in Namur, B, where he cre­at­ed the Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Catal­y­sis, of which he remained Direc­tor until 1995. He was on sab­bat­i­cal leaves in 1979 as Research Fel­low with J. Sin­felt at Exxon Res. & Devel­op. Corp., Lin­den, USA, and in 1982–84 as Research Sci­en­tist, Head of Explorato­ry Catal­y­sis Syn­the­sis Group at Mobil Res. & Devel­op. Corp., Cen­tral Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry, Prince­ton, USA. In 1995, he became Full Pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Liv­er­pool and was appoint­ed Direc­tor of the Lev­er­hulme Cen­tre for Inno­v­a­tive Catal­y­sis (LCIC). In 2003, he obtained the Gul­benkian Pro­fes­sor­ship at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Algarve in Faro, P, where he was Direc­tor of the Chem­i­cal Research Cen­tre. He became lat­er Invit­ed Pro­fes­sor at the “Insti­tu­to Supe­ri­or Tec­ni­co” (IST) of the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of Lis­bon, where he had exten­sive coop­er­a­tion with the group led by Prof. F. Ramôa Ribeiro.

His main fields of inves­ti­ga­tion dealt with catal­y­sis over zeo­lites in gen­er­al, sup­port­ed met­als, nov­el mate­ri­als and mixed oxides in par­tic­u­lar, and alka­ne upgrad­ing and fine chem­i­cals more specif­i­cal­ly. One of Eric’s most strik­ing qual­i­ties was his acute inter­est for every new sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery and for indus­tri­al appli­ca­tions of his find­ings.

Eric Der­ouane had an unusu­al work­ing effi­cien­cy. He had a high intel­lec­tu­al mobil­i­ty and was always attract­ed by new mate­ri­als and new con­cepts. Among them, one can men­tion ZSM‑5/MFI new zeo­lite in the ear­ly 70s, lead­ing to a 30 year col­lab­o­ra­tion with J.C. Védrine, cuprate-type super­con­duc­tors, con­fine­ment effect and mol­e­c­u­lar traf­fic con­trol in zeolitic mate­ri­als. He also stud­ied reac­tion mech­a­nisms using iso­topic labelling and in-situ MAS-NMR in the 80s, com­bi­na­to­r­i­al catal­y­sis and high through­put tech­nol­o­gy in the late 90s.

Dur­ing his 20 years of ded­i­cat­ed ser­vice to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Namur, Eric Der­ouane devel­oped new con­cepts, which had an impor­tant impact on the catal­y­sis and zeo­lite com­mu­ni­ties. In 1986, he was elect­ed Head of the Chem­istry Depart­ment. He then embarked upon an impres­sive re-struc­tur­ing pro­gramme to improve its effi­cien­cy. The mod­el, which he ini­ti­at­ed, is still in ser­vice today. His lab­o­ra­to­ry was rec­og­nized as an out­stand­ing school of sci­en­tif­ic research and edu­ca­tion in catal­y­sis.

Very ear­ly, Eric Der­ouane real­ized the impor­tance of inter­dis­ci­pli­nar­i­ty, which lead him to play a key role in the cre­ation of the Insti­tute for Stud­ies in Inter­face Sci­ences (ISIS) at Namur in 1987, which gath­ered lab­o­ra­to­ries of physics and chem­istry for 20 years. Eric Der­ouane also paid heed to tech­no­log­i­cal trans­fer to indus­tries. After his expe­ri­ence gained through his sab­bat­i­cal posi­tions at Exxon and at Mobil, he devel­oped many col­lab­o­ra­tions with indus­tri­al part­ners and served as con­sul­tant.

At Liv­er­pool, the aim of the LCIC was to pro­mote cre­ative fun­da­men­tal cat­alyt­ic sci­ence and often to take-up indus­tri­al chal­lenges. Eric Der­ouane defined inno­va­tion as “the cre­ation of a new or bet­ter prod­uct or process, imply­ing cre­ativ­i­ty, use­ful­ness, and appli­ca­tion”. Towards this end, the LCIC had indus­tri­al affil­i­ates as part­ners. Under his lead­er­ship the LCIC became the largest catal­y­sis cen­tre in the UK.and a cen­tre of sci­en­tif­ic exchanges and col­lab­o­ra­tions. Eric Der­ouane estab­lished links with many UK and inter­na­tion­al lab­o­ra­to­ries. Eric Der­ouane cre­at­ed in 1997 an Euro­pean Asso­ci­at­ed Lab­o­ra­to­ry “Lab­o­ra­to­ry for high speci­fici­ty catal­y­sis” between LCIC/University of Liv­er­pool and Insti­tut de Recherch­es sur la Catal­yse, Lyon, F/CNRS.

In 1999, he co-found­ed with Prof. S. Roberts the spin-off Liv­er­pool-based com­pa­ny “Sty­la­cats”, of which he became a direc­tor. He pro­vid­ed wise sug­ges­tions and ideas, which led the com­pa­ny to pio­neer new tech­nolo­gies, in par­tic­u­lar cat­a­lysts for asym­met­ric hydro­gena­tion, microwave-induced reac­tions and enzyme mimet­ics.
At the Uni­ver­si­ty of Faro, Eric Der­ouane devel­oped a research project, joint­ly with the Insti­tu­to Tec­ni­co de Lis­boa, on Friedel-Crafts reac­tions. He also col­lab­o­rat­ed close­ly on var­i­ous research projects with Prof. F. Ramôa Ribeiro’s zeo­lite group of the Insti­tu­to Supe­ri­or Tec­ni­co of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lis­bon.

Eric Der­ouane co-authored over 400 sci­en­tif­ic papers, 11 books and 61 patents.
Eric Der­ouane also con­tributed to the devel­op­ment and strength­en­ing of the euro­pean catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty. He cre­at­ed in 1975 the Euro­pean Asso­ci­a­tion in Catal­y­sis (EUROCAT), a con­sor­tium of Euro­pean lab­o­ra­to­ries under the aus­pices of the Coun­cil of Europe and pro­mot­ed stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of cat­a­lysts: Euro-Pt1 to ‑Pt4, Euro-Ni1 & ‑Ni2, Euro­cat zeo­lite, Euro­cat oxides, etc. This Euro­cat group paved the way to the cre­ation of the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (EFCATS) and of the François Gault lec­ture­ship. He was elect­ed Pres­i­dent of EFCATS in 1995 for two years.

He became Edi­tor-in-chief of J. Mol. Catal. in 1982 and was mem­ber of the Edi­to­r­i­al Boards of sev­er­al sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals and mem­ber of the sci­en­tif­ic com­mit­tees of many con­gress­es and col­lo­quia. He co-orga­nized sev­er­al con­gress­es him­self, in par­tic­u­lar with F. Lemos and F. Ramôa Ribeiro in Por­tu­gal sev­er­al NATO Advanced Stud­ies Insti­tutes on top­ics includ­ing “the con­ver­sion of light alka­nes”, “com­bi­na­to­r­i­al catal­y­sis and high through­put cat­a­lyst design and test­ing”, “prin­ci­ples and meth­ods for accel­er­at­ed cat­a­lyst design and test­ing” and “sus­tain­able strate­gies for the upgrad­ing of nat­ur­al gas”.

Eric Derouane’s con­tri­bu­tions to catal­y­sis have been recog­nised by many awards and aca­d­e­m­ic hon­ors, includ­ing the Wauters Prize (1964), the Mund Prize (1967) of the “Société Royale de Chimie”, the Stas-Spring Prize (1971) and the Adolphe Wetrems Prize (1975) of the “Académie Royale de Bel­gique”, the Roset­ta Briegel-Bar­ton Lec­tur­ership at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa (1973), the Prize of the “Cer­cle of Alum­ni de la Fon­da­tion Uni­ver­si­taire de Bel­gique” (1980), the Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (1981), the Catal­y­sis Lec­ture­ship of the Société Chim­ique de France (1993) and the pres­ti­gious Franc­qui Prize, B (1994), the high­est hon­or for all Sci­ences in Bel­gium.

He was made “Offici­er de l’Ordre Léopold” in Bel­gium (1990), cor­re­spond­ing Mem­ber of the “Académie Royale des Sci­ences, des Let­tres et des Beaux Arts de Bel­gique” (1991), mem­ber of the “New York Acad­e­my of Sci­ences” and Asso­ciate Mem­ber of the “Euro­pean Acad­e­my of Arts, Sci­ences and Human­i­ties”. He was con­ferred Doc­tor Hon­oris Causa, Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of Lis­bon (1996).

Eric Der­ouane attract­ed many stu­dents and for­eign schol­ars to his lab­o­ra­to­ries in Namur, Liv­er­pool and Faro. His ener­gy, his clear mind and his broad knowl­edge impressed his stu­dents, researchers and col­leagues. He was an out­stand­ing and demand­ing pro­fes­sor, always ready to share his knowl­edge with his stu­dents. His cours­es were always clear, high­ly struc­tured and eas­i­ly under­stand­able. Many of his for­mer stu­dents and post-docs occu­py today promi­nent posi­tions in uni­ver­si­ties and indus­tries. All of them will remem­ber his bril­liant and rig­or­ous sci­en­tif­ic approach, and no doubt they all will great­ly miss him.
 
Jacques C. Védrine and Michel Che, Paris
Fer­nan­do Ramôa Ribeiro, Lis­boa
Jian­liang Xiao, Liv­er­pool
Bao-Lian Su, Namur
23 April 2008

It is with great sad­ness that we have learned that Pro­fes­sor Eric Der­ouane passed away on 17 March in his home at Luz Lagos (Algarve) Por­tu­gal.

Pro­fes­sor Der­ouane will be remem­bered by his stu­dents and col­leagues, both in indus­try and acad­e­mia, for his cre­ative lead­er­ship of the Namur and Liv­er­pool catal­y­sis lab­o­ra­to­ries and for his men­tor­ship of many col­leagues and stu­dents..

Pro­fes­sor Der­ouane was world renowned for his many con­tri­bu­tions in catal­y­sis for petro­chem­i­cals and fine chem­i­cals, par­tic­u­lar­ly for his work on zeo­lites and their role in cat­alyt­ic process­es and the use of in-situ meth­ods for cat­a­lyst char­ac­ter­i­za­tion.

Pro­fes­sor Eric G. Der­ouane obtained in 1968 his MSc in Chem­istry at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty and his Dr.Sc. at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Liège. He then became a Research Asso­ciate of FNRS (Bel­gium). In 1973, he was appoint­ed as Pro­fes­sor at the Fac­ultés Uni­ver­si­taires Notre-Dame de la Paix (FUNDP) in Namur, Bel­gium, where he cre­at­ed the Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Catal­y­sis. In 1995, he was invit­ed as Full Pro­fes­sor and Direc­tor of the Lerve­hulme Cen­tre for Inno­v­a­tive Catal­y­sis at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Liv­er­pool. Eric G. Der­ouane became Pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Faro, Por­tu­gal in 2003.

His con­tri­bu­tions to catal­y­sis have been rec­og­nized by the Cia­pet­ta Lec­ture­ship of the North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety (1981), the Catal­y­sis Lec­ture­ship of the Société Chim­ique de France (1993), and the 1994 Franc­qui Prize. He was a Cor­re­spond­ing Mem­ber of the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Bel­gium, Edi­tor-in-Chief of the Jour­nal of Mol­e­c­u­lar Catal­y­sis A, and past Pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of the Catal­y­sis Soci­eties (EFCATS) 1995–1997.
 
With kind regards,
 
Miche Che, Fer­nan­do Ramoa Ribeiro and Jacques C. Védrine

Pro­fes­sor John M. (Mike) White passed away sud­den­ly and unex­pect­ed­ly on Fri­day, August 31, 2007, while vis­it­ing his son in Okla­homa City. Since 1966, Mike worked for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas for 41 years as a well-loved chem­istry pro­fes­sor, served as the Chair­man of the Chem­istry Dept. and Direc­tor of the Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­ter. Mike held the pres­ti­gious Robert A. Welch Chair in Chem­istry and had been with The Uni­ver­si­ty, when he was hired as an assis­tant pro­fes­sor fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of his Ph.D. at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois. His research inter­ests spanned a wide range of top­ics relat­ed to sur­face and mate­ri­als chem­istry, and he was one of the pio­neers in pho­to­chem­istry. A major con­tri­bu­tion to the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty was his exploita­tion of the tech­niques of sur­face physics for the inves­ti­ga­tion of a vari­ety of sur­face chem­i­cal prob­lems.

From 1991–2002, White served as Direc­tor of one of the ear­li­est Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion-fund­ed sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy cen­ters, head­ing up a team of twelve fac­ul­ty, five post­doc­tor­al fel­lows, and twen­ty-five grad­u­ate stu­dents from four UT depart­ments. His Cen­ter for Syn­the­sis, Growth and Analy­sis of Elec­tron­ic Mate­ri­als was fre­quent­ly held up by NSF offi­cials as a mod­el of superb research, man­age­ment, and report­ing for oth­er inter­dis­ci­pli­nary col­lab­o­ra­tions. He also spent time research­ing for the Fritz- Haber Insti­tute in Berlin, Ger­many and most recent­ly for the Pacif­ic North­west Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry in Rich­land, WA direct­ing the Insti­tute for Inter­fa­cial Catal­y­sis.

Pro­fes­sor White grad­u­at­ed more than fifty doc­tor­al stu­dents, pub­lished over 650 schol­ar­ly arti­cles, and served a term as Chair of the Depart­ment of Chem­istry and Bio­chem­istry dur­ing his forty-one years at The Uni­ver­si­ty. Many of his for­mer stu­dents and post­doc­tor­al fel­lows now teach in uni­ver­si­ties around the world. He men­tored numer­ous new fac­ul­ty and part­nered with them on research projects, help­ing to secure hard-to-get grant fund­ing. He engaged large num­bers of under­grad­u­ates in research and encour­aged them to con­tin­ue with grad­u­ate stud­ies. Many of these under­grads pub­lished results in ref­er­eed jour­nals and made pre­sen­ta­tions at pro­fes­sion­al meet­ings. Noth­ing made him proud­er than see­ing his stu­dents suc­ceed, and in his work, his students—not his stel­lar reputation—were by far his top pri­or­i­ty.

In 2004, White began a joint research appoint­ment with Pacif­ic North­west Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ries that led to the estab­lish­ment of the Depart­ment of Ener­gy’s Insti­tute for Inter­fa­cial Catal­y­sis at PNNL, and in Feb­ru­ary, 2005, he was named its first Direc­tor, a post he held until his death.

If you wish to donate to the Endow­ment Fund for a Grad­u­ate Stu­dent Fel­low­ship in Mem­o­ry of Mike White, and/or if you wish to make a com­mit­ment for a future con­tri­bu­tion to this fund, please sim­ply make a check out to UT Austin, or The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Austin, impor­tant­ly adding in the memo field on the check “in mem­o­ry of Mike White”, or write a let­ter of com­mit­ment with the pro­posed amount and future date, and mail it to:
 
Attn: Tim Aron­son
Col­lege of Nat­ur­al Sci­ences, Office of the Dean
The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas
1 Uni­ver­si­ty Sta­tion G2500
Austin, Texas 78712–0549
 
Sto­ry in part from Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas web­site, http://www.cm.utexas.edu/news/view/191.

On Sept. 26, Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor James A. Schwarz died ear­li­er in the day at St. Joseph’s Hos­pi­tal in Syra­cuse fol­low­ing a long ill­ness. He was 60.

A native of New Jer­sey, Schwarz received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Stevens Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in Hobo­ken, N.J. He began his col­lege career study­ing math­e­mat­ics, but found his niche in chem­i­cal physics and applied chem­istry. As a doc­tor­al stu­dent at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, he par­tic­i­pat­ed in vit­a­min C research with Nobel Prize win­ner Linus Paul­ing and then spent a year at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty work­ing with renowned physi­cist and chemist Jack Lin­nett.

Schwarz spent three years in acad­e­mia as a vis­it­ing schol­ar, post­doc­tor­al fel­low and instruc­tor, and sev­en years work­ing in the oil indus­try for Chevron Research and Exxon Research and Engi­neer­ing. He returned to acad­e­mia in 1979 when he joined ECS’s Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Mate­ri­als Sci­ence as an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor. He was pro­mot­ed to full pro­fes­sor in 1985.

Lawrence Tavlar­ides, pro­fes­sor of chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing, became the chair of the depart­ment in 1981 and was Schwarz’s col­league and friend ever since. He says that Schwarz was a pas­sion­ate schol­ar and researcher who was con­stant­ly pro­mot­ing research col­lab­o­ra­tion among fac­ul­ty and stu­dents. “His enthu­si­asm
was con­ta­gious,” Tavlar­ides says. “He was always engag­ing col­leagues and stu­dents, and had a way of help­ing fac­ul­ty go in new direc­tions.” He men­tored count­less num­bers of grad­u­ate stu­dents and post­doc­tor­al fel­lows, many of whom went on to dis­tin­guish them­selves in indus­try, aca­d­e­mics and the physics and chem­istry com­mu­ni­ties.

Schwarz was known on nation­al and inter­na­tion­al lev­els for his pio­neer­ing research on the adsorp­tive stor­age of hydro­gen on car­bon and cat­a­lyst prepa­ra­tion, and held 14 patents for his dis­cov­er­ies. Over the years, Schwarz received near­ly $5 mil­lion in research grants and con­tracts, includ­ing a grant from Brookhaven Labs to research the stor­age of hydro­gen for poten­tial fuel cell appli­ca­tions. In 1988, he received a U.S. patent for Modification/Metal Assist­ed Car­bon Cold Stor­age of Hydro­gen (MACS). In 1990, he estab­lished the Lab­o­ra­to­ry for Advanced Stor­age Sys­tems for Hydro­gen with­in the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Mate­ri­als Sci­ence to fur­ther hydro­gen ener­gy research. His life­long research result­ed in more than 225 pub­li­ca­tions.

Schwarz was award­ed a Ful­bright Award to study in Roma­nia in 1997. He also received the Anaren Microwave Award for Research and the pres­ti­gious Lang­muir Lec­ture­ship from the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety. In 2002, SU award­ed Schwarz the Chancellor’s Cita­tion for Excep­tion­al Aca­d­e­m­ic Achieve­ment, one of the most pres­ti­gious awards bestowed by the Uni­ver­si­ty.

In the past few years, Schwarz bat­tled seri­ous health prob­lems. Even with the chal­lenges he faced, Schwarz came back and embraced his sit­u­a­tion as a chance to expand his learn­ing. After going through a hip replace­ment, he used that expe­ri­ence to branch out into bio­engi­neer­ing research. He served as direc­tor of a nanoscience lab­o­ra­to­ry at SU, con­tin­ued his hydro­gen research and was work­ing on two oth­er pub­li­ca­tions and a patent. He was also serv­ing as the chair of the Col­loid and Sur­face Chem­istry Divi­sion of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety (ACS).

Schwarz is sur­vived by his sis­ter, Lil­lian Jean Panachy­da of Lans­dale, Pa., and by numer­ous col­leagues and friends. A memo­r­i­al ser­vice will be held Oct. 2 at 2 p.m. at the East­ern Hills Bible Church, 4600 Enders Rd. in Man­lius, N.Y. A Uni­ver­si­ty memo­r­i­al ser­vice in Hen­dricks Chapel will be held at a lat­er date.
 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Con­tact: Kel­ly Homan Rodos­ki
Thurs­day, Sept. 30, 2004 Phone: (315) 443‑3784
kahoman@syr.edu

Robert L. Bur­well, Jr., Ipati­eff Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of Chem­istry at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, will always be remem­bered by his many friends, col­leagues, and stu­dents as a learned gen­tle­man of high moral stan­dard, a ded­i­cat­ed edu­ca­tor, and a thor­ough and bril­liant researcher in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis. He was a lead­ing fig­ure in guid­ing the devel­op­ment of the catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty in the U.S. and the world. His many con­tri­bu­tions to the com­mu­ni­ty includ­ed serv­ing on the gov­ern­ing body of the (North Amer­i­can) Catal­y­sis Soci­ety from 1964 to 1977 as Direc­tor, Vice Pres­i­dent, and in 1973–77, Pres­i­dent. From 1955–84, he served on the Board of Direc­tor, as U.S Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Con­gress, Vice Pres­i­dent, and Pres­i­dent (1980–84) of the Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress on Catal­y­sis. He chaired the Gor­don Research Con­fer­ence on Catal­y­sis in 1957, and was Asso­ciate Edi­tor and a mem­ber of the Edi­to­r­i­al Board of Jour­nal of Catal­y­sis.

Robert Bur­well received his Ph.D. in 1936 from Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty under the guid­ance of Sir Hugh Tay­lor. After three years as a Chem­istry Instruc­tor at Trin­i­ty Col­lege, in 1939 he joined the Chem­istry Depart­ment at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty. Except for the World War II peri­od from 1942 until 1945, when, hav­ing enlist­ed, he worked at the Naval Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry, Dr. Bur­well served at North­west­ern until he retired in 1980. As Ipati­eff Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus, he con­tin­ued his research and intel­lec­tu­al activ­i­ties for anoth­er decade after retire­ment. Dur­ing his career he pub­lished over 170 orig­i­nal research arti­cles, served on Nation­al Research Coun­cil Com­mit­tees, IUPAC Com­mit­tees, the Petro­le­um Research Fund Advi­so­ry Board, the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion Chem­istry Advi­so­ry Board, and oth­ers, as well as Chair­ing the Chem­istry Depart­ment at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty. In 1994, he moved to Vir­ginia with Elise, his wife of over six­ty years.

Pro­fes­sor Bur­well was among the first sci­en­tists who under­stood the crit­i­cal con­nec­tion between gen­er­al chem­istry and catal­y­sis. He intro­duced and pop­u­lar­ized con­cepts that are now famil­iar to and even com­mon­place with­in the entire catal­y­sis com­mu­ni­ty. His research themes cen­tered around elu­ci­da­tion of the reac­tion mech­a­nisms, nature of sur­face inter­me­di­ates, and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of active sites of sol­id cat­a­lysts. He was well known for the use of H‑D exchange for such stud­ies. Using this tech­nique, he iden­ti­fied the impor­tance of 1,2‑diadsorbed alka­ne on noble met­al sur­faces in the exchange and the hydro­gena­tion reac­tion, and the irre­versibil­i­ty in the adsorp­tion of alkene dur­ing hydro­gena­tion. He estab­lished the “rollover” mech­a­nism for cyclic hydro­car­bons in these reac­tions, and the term “sur­face organometal­lic zoo”. He care­ful­ly doc­u­ment­ed the impor­tance of sur­face coor­di­na­tion unsat­u­ra­tion in catal­y­sis by met­al oxides, and devel­oped new cat­a­lysts of unusu­al activ­i­ties by depo­si­tion of organometal­lic com­plex­es on alu­mi­na and sil­i­ca, and by mod­i­fy­ing sil­i­ca sur­face.

His many sci­en­tif­ic con­tri­bu­tions and their indus­tri­al appli­ca­tions were rec­og­nized in his day, as evi­denced by the many awards and hon­ors he received. They includ­ed the ACS Kendall Award in Col­loid and Sur­face Chem­istry, the Lubri­zol Award in Petro­le­um Chem­istry, and the Hum­boldt Senior Sci­en­tist Award. In addi­tion, the Robert L. Bur­well Lec­ture­ship Award of the (North Amer­i­can) Catal­y­sis Soci­ety was estab­lished in recog­ni­tion of his out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the field of catal­y­sis. Pro­fes­sor Bur­well was also known for the first short course in het­ero­ge­neous catal­y­sis that he taught for sev­er­al years togeth­er with Michel Boudart.

To those who knew him per­son­al­ly, Bur­well was not only an impos­ing intel­lect, but a warm, deeply car­ing, pleas­ant per­son, a com­pli­cat­ed per­son with many facets. For instance, while wise and judi­cious, he nev­er­the­less con­duct­ed him­self with a great sense of humor and wit. Any who he favored soon real­ized he could engage in live­ly con­ver­sa­tion on prac­ti­cal­ly any sub­ject. Many of his cowork­ers also remem­bered him for his numer­ous per­cep­tive sci­en­tif­ic advice and sug­ges­tions. Very often in sem­i­nars, stu­dents felt that they learned more about a sub­ject from his prob­ing ques­tions than the actu­al sem­i­nar itself. His fam­i­ly remem­bered him also as a care­tak­er extra­or­di­naire. His devo­tion to his wife, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the last year of her life, will be remem­bered by all.

Dr. Bur­well was a walk­ing encyclopedia—indeed he was sci­en­tif­ic con­sul­tant to the World Book Ency­clo­pe­dia. He read exten­sive­ly on vir­tu­al­ly every sub­ject. He par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoyed a com­mand­ing knowl­edge of the birds, flo­ra and fau­na and could be seen bird watch­ing in the snowy ear­ly springs in Evanston. He enjoyed cul­tur­al mat­ters and shar­ing of his knowl­edge with his col­leagues, friends, and post-doc­tor­al and grad­u­ate stu­dents, a trait he con­tin­ued even after he retired to Vir­ginia with his wife, where he became an active mem­ber of many local Vir­ginia muse­ums and a vari­ety of genealog­i­cal soci­eties (and a founder of the Com­put­er Club and Wine Club at the retire­ment com­mu­ni­ty). He was often expect­ed to be the cul­tur­al guide for his group of friends on tours around the world. He par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoyed teach­ing Amer­i­can cul­ture and the nuances of the Eng­lish lan­guage to his inter­na­tion­al post-doc­tor­al and grad­u­ate stu­dents. Dr. Bur­well loved to refer to the 4th of July as “the day we cel­e­brate Eng­lish becom­ing a for­eign lan­guage”. He also pos­sessed a cul­ti­vat­ed taste for wine, and was proud of his col­lec­tion of antique porce­lain.

Per­haps the most appro­pri­ate ref­er­ence to Robert Bur­well was from Marie West­brook, the Depart­ment Sec­re­tary of Chem­istry at North­west­ern, who referred to him always as “Mr. Bur­well”, not as “Doc­tor” or “Pro­fes­sor”. When asked why, she replied: “A lot of peo­ple can become a Pro­fes­sor or a Doc­tor, and I use Mis­ter just for him”. On May 15, Mr. Bur­well passed away at the age of 91. He was buried on June 28th, 2003 in Christ Epis­co­pal Church in West Riv­er, Mary­land next to his beloved wife, Elise.

Pre­pared by Harold H. Kung, with con­tri­bu­tions from Kath­leen Tay­lor, Gary Haller, Pol­ly Bur­well Haynes, and Lou Allred.

Paul Grange was born in Lyon dur­ing the war. He grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lyon, which, in 1970 grant­ed him a PhD, for a work done at the Insti­tut de Recherche sur la Catal­yse, in Villeur­banne-Lyon. This was lat­er fol­lowed by a post-doc­tor­al posi­tion in the Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Catal­y­sis and Sol­id State Chem­istry in the then new­ly split Lou­vain Uni­ver­si­ty. In the course of years, the sci­en­tif­ic activ­i­ty of Pro­fes­sor Grange pro­gres­sive­ly shift­ed away from sol­id state chem­istry, his ini­tial inter­est dur­ing his PhD. Lat­er his results in the syn­the­sis of high tran­si­tion tem­per­a­ture super­con­duc­tors and out­stand­ing suc­cess with high­ly dis­persed nitrides, oxyni­trides and the very orig­i­nal syn­the­sis of more com­pli­cat­ed com­pounds schemat­i­cal­ly rep­re­sent­ed by AlPON – ZrPON – AlGaPON – VAl­ON, made this back­ground cru­cial. In the course of 31 years, he changed posi­tion no less than sev­en times. In spite of that, or because of that, he could man­age to have some sort of a “sab­bat­i­cal leave”, in 1983–1984, at INTEVEP in Cara­cas, a stay rich in fruit­ful teach­ings. The last change was in 1996, on his pro­mo­tion to Full Pro­fes­sor (“Pro­fesseur Ordi­naire”). From that time on, the remark­able dynamism of Pro­fes­sor Grange led him to com­bine fun­da­men­tal research on select­ed advanced sub­jects of catal­y­sis (espe­cial­ly oxyni­trides, basic catal­y­sis) with more appli­ca­tion-ori­ent­ed devel­op­ments. In most cas­es the work was direct­ly relat­ed to spe­cif­ic prob­lems of indus­try, but nev­er­the­less per­mit­ted the com­ple­tion of 29 PhD the­ses and 43 grad­u­ate research pro­grams, and the pub­li­ca­tion of 418 arti­cles. Paul Grange engaged in an impres­sive devel­op­ment of activ­i­ties, ini­ti­at­ing co-oper­a­tive pro­grams in Bel­gium and with for­eign uni­ver­si­ties (Bucharest, Tunis, Caen, Argenti­na), and cre­at­ing one of the activ­i­ty branch­es of CERTECH, a uni­ver­si­ty sub­sidiary for applied research. In UCL, he became mem­ber of var­i­ous com­mit­tees, was select­ed as mem­ber of the Research Advi­so­ry Coun­cil of the uni­ver­si­ty, where he was elect­ed Chair­man of the Depart­ment of Applied Chem­istry and Bio-Indus­tries a few days before his death. In less than sev­en years Paul Grange was able to ful­ly devel­op his broad capac­i­ties. He cer­tain­ly felt that as a deserved com­pen­sa­tion after many years of uncer­tain­ties. But the price was wor­ries and work over­load, with that ter­ri­ble end in July.
 
Writ­ten by B. Del­mon (orig­i­nal text has been abre­vi­at­ed)