Nobel Laureate

Nobel Prize Winner to join UC Riverside Faculty

ilseu — Sun, 19 Jan 2020 06:18:39 +0000

Nobel Prize Winner to join UC Riverside Faculty ilseu Sat, 01/18/2020 - 22:18 More College News Sarah Nightingale | UCR Today July 02, 2018

Richard Schrock, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist and UC Riverside alumnus, will join the faculty in UCR’s College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences in September 2018. He will be the inaugural George K. Helmkamp Founder’s Chair in Chemistry, named after one of the founding faculty members of UCR’s Department of Chemistry.

Schrock, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from UCR in 1967, won the 2005 Nobel Prize in chemistry while he was a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was awarded the prize for the development of a catalyst for a reaction now used daily in the chemical industry for the efficient and more environmentally friendly production of pharmaceuticals, fuels, synthetic fibers, and many other products. Schrock shares the prize with Yves Chauvin of the Institut Francais du Petrole and Robert H. Grubbs of Caltech “for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis.”

“We are honored to welcome Professor Schrock back to campus as a member of our faculty,” said Cynthia Larive, UCR provost and executive vice chancellor. “As a Nobel laureate and alumnus, he serves as an inspiring role model and affirms that there are no limits to what UCR students can accomplish. Schrock’s choice to join UCR also emphasizes our growing status as a national leader in scientific research and discovery.”

Born in 1945 in Indiana, Schrock’s love of chemistry began at age 8, when his brother gave him a chemistry set. The budding scientist created a small laboratory in his mother’s pantry, which he stocked with test tubes and flasks purchased from a mail-order catalog, using the earnings from his morning newspaper route.

His interest in chemistry grew in high school—as did his home laboratory, which now included a few potentially dangerous chemicals. While there were no serious mishaps, Schrock recalls setting fire to a rug as a teenager, which brought the local fire department to his door.

In 1959, Schrock moved with his family to San Diego, where he completed high school and began his studies at UCR. He chose Riverside—then a relatively young campus—because the smaller school offered him a chance to do independent research as an undergraduate.

“My experience as an undergraduate at UCR in research in the laboratory of James Pitts and the quality of the classes in chemistry prepared me for my Ph.D. experience at Harvard. I look forward to returning to UCR for a few years to give back some of what it gave to me,” Schrock said.

Influenced by Jerry Bell, a UCR chemistry professor, Schrock applied to graduate school at Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1971. He then spent a year as a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Cambridge University, followed by three years at the Central Research and Development Department of E.I. duPont de Nemours and Co. He joined the faculty at MIT in 1975, where he was named the Frederick G. Keyes Professor of Chemistry in 1989.

At UCR, Schrock will mentor junior faculty, teach, and share his experience with students.

Kathryn Uhrich, dean of the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, said Schrock “brings to UCR a vast trove of pioneering scientific work and a keen interest in teaching undergraduates.”

“We are deeply honored that Dr. Schrock has joined our faculty,” Uhrich said. “It is a testament to the quality of our faculty, students and staff, and how far this college and university have come. The fact that Dr. Schrock studied chemistry as an undergraduate student at UCR and is now returning to his alma mater after such an impactful career, makes this especially significant.”

Jingsong Zhang, a professor of chemistry and chair of the chemistry department, said Schrock’s groundbreaking research and expertise will be a tremendous addition to the department.

“Professor Schrock launched his career in chemistry as an undergraduate at UCR and his return will greatly inspire our students and boost our research program,” Zhang said.

Schrock is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. He was associate editor of Organometallics for eight years and has published nearly 600 research papers.

At MIT, he was a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar (1978-1983) and a recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (1976-1978). In 1996, he received the American Chemical Society Award in Inorganic Chemistry for his efforts to develop cleaner and more efficient ways to manufacture chemicals. In addition, he has received the ACS Award in Organometallic Chemistry (1985), the Harrison Howe Award of the Rochester ACS section (1990), an Alexander von Humboldt Award (1995), the Bailar Medal from the University of Illinois (1998), an ACS Cope Scholar Award (2001), and the Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson Medal (2002).

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Nobel Laureate Barry Barish joins UC Riverside Faculty

ilseu — Sun, 19 Jan 2020 06:09:05 +0000

Nobel Laureate Barry Barish joins UC Riverside Faculty ilseu Sat, 01/18/2020 - 22:09 More College News Iqbal Pittalwala | UCR Today August 27, 2018

Physicist Barry C. Barish, who won the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of gravitational waves, will join the faculty of the University of California, Riverside, on Sept. 1.

Barish, the Linde Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at Caltech, shared the Nobel Prize with fellow Caltech physicist Kip Thorne and MIT physicist Rainer Weiss. The prize recognized their “decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.”

On Sept. 14, 2015, LIGO, or the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, detected for the first time gravitational waves predicted by Albert Einstein more than 100 years ago. A collision between two black holes generated the waves, which took 1.3 billion years to arrive at the LIGO detector. Barish brought the LIGO project to completion, enabling the first observation of this phenomenon.

“We are delighted that Professor Barish is joining our faculty,” said Cynthia Larive, UCR provost and executive vice chancellor. “He will be a strong inspiration for our students, researchers, and faculty. His hiring reflects the growing prominence of our research and graduate programs and the enormous effort UCR invests in our students to prepare them for research at the highest levels. We are grateful UCR will benefit from Professor Barish’s extraordinary achievements.”

Barish earned his bachelor’s degree in physics in 1957 and his doctorate in experimental particle physics in 1962 from UC Berkeley. He joined Caltech as a postdoc in 1963, became a professor in 1966, and was appointed Linde Professor of Physics in 1991. He led the LIGO effort from its inception through the final design stages, and in subsequent discoveries. In 1997, he created the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, which enables more than 1000 collaborators worldwide to participate in LIGO.

He has served on many important science committees, including co-chairing the subpanel of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel that developed a long-range plan for U.S. high-energy physics in 2001. He chaired the Commission of Particles and Fields and the U.S. Liaison Committee to the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, and has also been active in a variety of international physics collaborations.

“I very much look forward to joining the UCR physics faculty with its exciting research programs and orientation toward student success,” Barish said. “I hope to bring some new research perspectives, and especially, to helping educate the very special UCR student body.”

Barish is the recipient of the Fudan-Zhongzhi Science Award (China), Princess of Asturias Prize for Science and Technology (Spain), Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize from the European Physical Society, the Enrico Fermi Prize from the Italian Physical Society, and the Klopsteg Award from the American Association of Physics Teachers. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, which awarded him the Henry Draper Medal. From 2003 to 2010, he served as a presidential appointee to the National Science Board.

Barish is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Physical Society, where he also served as president. He has received honorary doctorates from the University of Bologna, the University of Florida, and the University of Glasgow.

Working with UCR students — especially as a first-generation college student himself — was a major factor is Barish’s decision to join the faculty in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences.

Kathryn Uhrich, the dean of the college, noted Barish’s work has “tremendously impacted the field of astrophysics.”

“We are truly grateful for Professor Barish’s willingness to share his wealth of groundbreaking research and knowledge with UCR students and faculty, who also work every day to follow his example and push the boundaries of science,” she said. “That we have two Nobel Prize winners joining our faculty puts us in rare company among international universities and speaks to the quality of our institution — its people, research, learning, and progress.”

Barish is the second Nobel laureate to join UCR. Last month, Richard Schrock, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist and UC Riverside alumnus, announced he was joining the faculty.

Recently, Barish and Schrock were inducted as honorary academicians into the Royal Academy of European Doctors, based in Spain.

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