Catalytic Research Associates

By the late 1930s, Jersey, associated with a group of companies looking for improved catalytic processes (the Catalytic Research Associates), combined its past cracking and catalytic experience in developing a fully continuous catalytic cracking system. 

The Catalytic Research Associates generated a tremendous research effort (55). In terms of scientific manpower, the effort was surpassed only by the Manhattan Project (4). At Jersey Standard about 400 men worked on the project. "The leaders were E. V. Murphree, D. L. Campbel, H. Z. Martin and C. W. Tyson - known to their associates as The Four Horsemen (54). During this period Notre Dame football was a "religion in the U.S. The backfield of one of their most famous undefeated teams was dubbed "The Four Horsemen" by Grantland Rice, the dean of U.S. sports writers. To be compared to the fabled Four Horsemen was high praise. 

In 1938, the Jersey formed a consortium of eight companies, which was named the Catalytic Research Associates, or CRA, with a charter to develop a catalytic cracking process which would operate outside of Houdiy s patents. These initial eight companies included Jersey, M.W. Kellogg Co., Royal Dutch Shell, the Standard Oil Co. of Indiana, Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. (today s BP), Universal Oil Products Co. (today s UOP), the Texas Corp. (which would become Texaco) and IG Farben (which was eventually dropped in 1940). Over 1000 professionals were employed to develop the FCC process during the course of time in which the CRA consortium was in existence. 

The first edition of Catalytic Asymmetric Synthesis, published in the fall of 1993, was very warmly received by research communities in academia and industries from graduate students, research associates, faculty, staff, senior researchers, and others. The book was published at the very moment that the Food Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States clarified the situation in Chiral Drugs, the word chirotechnology was created, and chirotechnology industries were spawning in the United States and Britain. 

ISOCONVERSION A process for converting vegetable oils to liquid fuels. Developed by Applied Research Associates and Chevron Lummus Global. The process uses catalytic hydrothermolysis (1), followed by hydroprocessing and fractionation. Licensed in 2012 in North America to Aemetis Advanced Fuels. 

As in other fields of nanosdence, the application of STM techniques to the study of ultrathin oxide layers has opened up a new era of oxide materials research. New emergent phenomena of structure, stoichiometry, and associated physical and chemical properties have been observed and new oxide phases, hitherto unknown in the form of bulk material, have been deteded in nanolayer form and have been elucidated with the help of the STM. Some of these oxide nanolayers are and will be of paramount interest to the field of advanced catalysis, as active and passive layers in catalytic model studies, on the one hand, and perhaps even as components in real nanocatalytic applications, on the other hand. We have illustrated with the help of prototypical examples the growth and the structural variety of oxide nanolayers on metal surfaces as seen from the perspective of the STM. The selection of the particular oxide systems presented here refleds in part their relevance in catalysis and is also related to our own scientific experience. 

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