Pro­fes­sor Lás­zló Guczi

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.

James Robert Katzer

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)

Paul B. Weisz

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) 

Pro­fes­sor José M. Parera

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.