Herschbach. Dudley

Herschbach, Dudley R. (1932- ). Awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1986 for work reporting that the energies of reactions of crossed molecular beams of isolated alkali metal atoms and alkyl halide molecules appeared mostly as vibrational excited states of products. This method of studying all types of chemical reactions led to a more detailed knowledge of reaction processes. Doctorate awarded from Harvard in 1958. 

I. Herschbach, Dudley R. II. Avery, John. III. Goscinski, QD462.6.S25D56 1993... 

Herman R.M., 274 Hermite Charles, 191 Herschbach Dudley R., 161, 212, 589, 707, 886 Hertz Gustav, 302 Herzberg Gerhard 259,... 

Herschbach, Dudley Robert (b. 1932) American physical chemist... 

It is a pleasure to acknowledge the many helpful discussions which I have had with my students working on the problem of barriers. I should like to thank Dr. Dudley Herschbach and also Dr. Robert Curl for criticism of the manuscript. 

Usually we talk about reactions in solution, but recently techniques have been developed to follow reactions that occur in a vacuum when a stream of reactant A and a stream of reactant B cross each other in a defined direction, as with molecular beams. From the direction in which the products are ejected and their energies, much fundamental information can be deduced about the details of the molecular processes. Lasers, which emit light-energy in a highly focused beam, are sometimes used to put energy into one of the reactants in a defined way. Such a technique reveals less about the nature of the transition state than about what is called the dynamics of the process—how molecules collide so as to react, and how the products carry away the energy of the overall reaction. The development and application of such techniques were recognized by a Nobel Prize in 1986 to Dudley Herschbach, Yuan Lee, and John Polanyi. 

Hoffmann, "Under the Surface," 1598. Also see R. B. Bernstein, Dudley R. Herschbach, and R. D. Levine, "Dynamical Aspects of Stereochemistry," Journal of Physical Chemistry 91 (1987), 53655375, on 5375. 

Dudley Herschbach United States chemical elementary processes... 

The author expresses his appreciation to Dudley Herschbach, Herschel Rabitz, John Coleman,... 

The author expresses his appreciation to Dudley Herschbach, Herschel Rabitz, John Coleman, and Alexander Mazziotti for their support and encouragement. The author thanks the NSF, the Henry-Camille Dreyfus Foundation, the Alfred R Sloan Foundation, and the David-Lucile Packard Foundation for their support. 

LEE, YUAN T. (1936-). Awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry in 19X6 jointly with John C. Polanyi and Dudley R. Herschbach for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes. A former student of Herschbach. Lee relined molecular-beam and laser techniques, comhining them with theory to perform definitive studies of reactions of individual complex molecules. Lee received his Doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley in 1965. 

In 1994 on the occasion of Herzberg s ninetieth birthday, the Canadian Journal of Physics published a special issue. The festschrift, edited by Donald Betts and John Coxon of Dalhousie University, contains 72 papers by many of the world s leading spectroscopists and theoretical chemists. In his acknowledgment, Nobel laureate Dudley Herschbach summarized Herzberg s inestimable impact with the following tribute 4... 

Molecular beams are very important tools for characterizing intermolecular and intramolecular reactions. In fact, the 1988 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Yuan Lee, Dudley Herschbach, and John Polanyi for studies which were mostly made possible by this technique. A particularly useful variant is the supersonic molecular beam, which in the simplest case pushes a high-pressure mixture of helium and trace amounts of some larger guest molecule through a nozzle. When the helium atoms enter the... 

Constantinos A. Tsipis, Vladimir S. Popov, and Dudley R. Herschbach, New Methods in Quantum Theory. Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on New Methods in Quantum Theory, held in Halkidiki, Greece, May 14-19,1995, in NATO ASI Ser., Ser. 3, Vol. 8, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1996. 

Quoted in Bretislav Friedrich and Dudley Herschbach, Daedalus, Winter 1998, p. 179. 

John C. Polanyi (b. 1929 in Berlin) is University Professor at the Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada. Dudley R. Herschbach (b. 1932), Yuan T. Lee (b. 1936), and John Polanyi received jointly the chemistry 1986 Nobel Prize for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes. ... 

People laughed, because that was how Dudley Herschbach, Yuan Lee, myself, and many others in the dynamics community routinely began our lectures. 

I am, however, only one of many who have seen the extraordinary possibilities offered by harpooning reactions. For example, Dudley Herschbach began his life as a dynamicist by studying that type of reaction. One should also add that my father himself was part of a continuous progression. What drew him to sodium reactions was that Fritz Haber had been studying an unexplained chemiluminescence from them. This was in Berlin and my father was in Haber s Institute as a young researcher. The history, as is usual in science, constitutes an unbroken chain. 

In some countries the actors are permitted to participate in the applause. This is what, by mutual agreement, the three of us — Dudley Herschbach, Yuan Lee, and myself—wish to do tonight. 

Michael Polanyi was an early influence on Dudley Herschbach. He cherishes the memory of all his five meetings with Polanyi. The first time they met was in 1962 when Michael Polanyi came to Berkeley to give some lectures. Polanyi visited Herschbach s laboratory and Polanyi was telling him stories about his son John. Polanyi was surprised that John became a scientist because, he said, John in his teenage years used to bitterly criticize his father, saying that he was writing papers, all the time, that were not connected with the real world. 

Before deciding on my graduate studies, I went to see Bill Klemperer, George Kistiakowsky, Bill Lipscomb, and E. B. Wilson, seeking their advice. Each one of them told me that there was not much to choose from outside of Harvard. But they all mentioned a former Harvard Junior Fellow, Dudley Herschbach, who was trying to set up crossed molecular-beam experiments at Berkeley. I went to Berkeley but ended up with a Harvard Ph.D. because within two years, Dudley was called back to be a full professor at Harvard. Herschbach proved to be the most influential person in my life, and I dedicated my book Angular Momentum to him. 

With Herschbach I worked on photodissociation dynamics and fluorescence. When I finished my Ph.D., Dudley arranged a beginning faculty position for me with A. C. Cope who was then Department Head at MIT. It was a typical old-boy-network arrangement, which would be impossible today. However, I did not stay around and told Cope that I would take the faculty position in another year. I went out to Colorado to the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA), at the University of Colorado. I was a postdoc there with Gordon Dunn and Ed Condon. At JILA, I got my real first experience with experiments. I returned to MIT after a year, but I only spent nine months there. In the intervening time. Cope had been removed from being Head, and the MIT chemistry department was squabbling and in disarray. When I went to see the provost, Jerry... 

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