Chemistry and Biochemistry Department

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Chemistry and Biochemistry Department CAMPUS NOTICE OFFICE OF THE DEAN - DIVISION OF PHYSICAL SCIENCES OFFICE OF THE CHAIR - CHEMISTRY AND BIOCHEMISTRY DEPARTMENT March 28, 2012 TO ALL ACADEMICS AND STAFF AT UCSD SUBJECT: James R. Arnold Memorial Tribute Saturday, May 5 To honor our friend and colleague, Jim Arnold, a memorial tribute is to be held at the University of California, San Diego Skaggs Pharmaceutical Sciences Building HSEC Auditorium at 2 pm on Saturday, May 5, 2012 (Jim's birthday). Please mark your calendar for this special event. For further information, such as a map to the building or information about hotels nearby offering a UCSD discount, please contact Virginia Perry ([email protected], tel. 858-534-0212, fax 858.534.6693). This event is not sponsored by the Health Sciences Educational Center. James R. Arnold - Professor of Chemistry - 1923 - 2012 James R. Arnold, the first Harold C. Urey Professor of Chemistry at the UC, San Diego (UCSD), died on January 6, 2012 at age 88 ending a long and distinguished career during which he made major contributions to the development and application of methods for measurement of cosmic ray derived radioisotopes to determine the ages of diverse geological and biological materials. Jim studied chemistry as an undergraduate at Princeton University and remained there to work on the Manhattan Project and obtain his PhD degree in 1946 with a thesis that remains classified. Subsequent postdoctoral work with Willard Libby at the University of Chicago involved the demonstration that measurement of carbon-14 could be used to establish the age of materials derived from atmospheric carbon dioxide, work that earned the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Libby in 1960. Following his postdoctoral work Jim held a faculty position at the University of Chicago but returned to Princeton as a faculty member in 1955. There he studied other cosmic ray produced radioisotopes for determining the history of meteorites, of rocks and soils, and the history of cosmic radiation. In 1958 Jim was enticed by Roger Revelle to move to the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla and to participate in the planning of the new institution that would become UCSD. In 1960 he became the first chairman of the chemistry department and, with Harold Urey and Hans Suess, recruited additional chemistry faculty for the new campus. At the same time he became a consultant for NASA and played an important role over the next decade in developing the scientific plans for the Apollo missions. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1964. Jim was heavily involved in NASA planning for the Apollo manned missions to the Moon and pioneered the determination of compositions of planetary surfaces by gamma-ray spectroscopy, which was used for mapping the chemical composition of the moon. In 1969 Jim was in Houston when the first lunar samples were returned and then brought samples back to his laboratory for analysis. These studies provided important insights concerning processes on the Moon and the history of solar cosmic rays. Jim received many awards, including the E.O. Lawrence award by the Atomic energy Commission in 1968, a NASA "Exceptional Scientific Achievement" medal in 1970 and the Meteoritical Society's Leonard Medal in 1976. Jim founded the California Space Institute in 1979 and served as its director until 1989. In 1980 an 8-mile-wide asteroid discovered by Eleanor Helin and Eugene Shoemaker was named "2143 jimarnold" in his honor. Jim is survived by his wife Louise, their sons Bob, Ted and Ken, and four grandchildren. Mark Thiemens Dean, Division of Physical Sciences Robert Continetti Chair, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry .
Recommended publications
  • HEAVY WATER and NONPROLIFERATION Topical Report
    HEAVY WATER AND NONPROLIFERATION Topical Report by MARVIN M. MILLER MIT Energy Laboratory Report No. MIT-EL 80-009 May 1980 COO-4571-6 MIT-EL 80-009 HEAVY WATER AND NONPROLIFERATION Topical Report Marvin M. Miller Energy Laboratory and Department of Nuclear Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 May 1980 Prepared For THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY UNDER CONTRACT NO. EN-77-S-02-4571.A000 NOTICE This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by the United States Government. Neither the United States nor the United States Department of Energy, nor any of their employees, nor any of their contractors, subcontractors, or their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or useful- ness of any information, apparatus, product or process disclosed or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. A B S T R A C T The following report is a study of various aspects of the relationship between heavy water and the development of the civilian and military uses of atomic energy. It begins with a historical sketch which traces the heavy water storyfrom its discovery by Harold Urey in 1932 through its coming of age from scientific curiosity to strategic nuclear material at the eve of World War II and finally into the post-war period, where the military and civilian strands have some- times seemed inextricably entangled. The report next assesses the nonproliferation implications of the use of heavy water- moderated power reactors; several different reactor types are discussed, but the focus in on the natural uranium, on- power fueled, pressure tube reactor developed in Canada, the CANDU.
    [Show full text]
  • Maria Goeppert Mayer Papers
    http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf4489p06g No online items Maria Goeppert Mayer Papers Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego Copyright 2015 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla 92093-0175 [email protected] URL: http://libraries.ucsd.edu/collections/sca/index.html Maria Goeppert Mayer Papers MSS 0020 1 Descriptive Summary Languages: English Contributing Institution: Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla 92093-0175 Title: Maria Goeppert Mayer Papers Identifier/Call Number: MSS 0020 Physical Description: 7.5 Linear feet(15 archives boxes, 1 flat box and 1 map case folder) Date (inclusive): 1906-1996 (bulk 1930-1972) Abstract: Papers of Maria Goeppert Mayer, Nobel Prize winning physicist and professor at the University of California, 1960-1964. The collection includes correspondence, biographical information, reprints, manuscript drafts, notebooks, teaching materials, subject files, news clippings and photographs. Scope and Content of Collection Papers of Maria Goeppert Mayer, Nobel Prize winning physicist and professor at the University of California, 1960-1964. The collection includes correspondence, biographical information, reprints, manuscript drafts, notebooks, teaching materials, subject files, news clippings and photographs. Accessions Processed in 1988: Mayer's papers contain a relative abundance of correspondence and her research notebooks. There are scant manuscript materials related to her numerous publications. Arranged in seven series: 1) CORRESPONDENCE, 2) REPRINTS, WRITINGS, AND LECTURES, 3) RESEARCH NOTEBOOKS AND CLASS LECTURES, 4) TEACHING MATERIALS, 5) BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS, 6) NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS and 7) SUBJECT MATERIALS. Accession Processed in 1997 Arranged in two series: 8) PHOTOGRAPHS and 9) AWARDS, CERTIFICATES AND DIPLOMAS. Accession Processed in 2015 Arranged in four series: 10) BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS, 11) CORRESPONDENCE, 12) WRITINGS BY MAYER and 13) PHOTOGRAPHS.
    [Show full text]
  • Hans Suess Papers
    http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf7c6008jd No online items Hans Suess Papers Finding aid prepared by Special Collections & Archives Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, California, 92093-0175 858-534-2533 [email protected] Copyright 2005 Hans Suess Papers MSS 0199 1 Descriptive Summary Title: Hans Suess Papers Identifier/Call Number: MSS 0199 Contributing Institution: Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, California, 92093-0175 Languages: English Physical Description: 29.0 Linear feet (69 archives boxes, 1 card file box and 5 oversize folders) Date (inclusive): 1875 - 1991 (bulk 1955-1991) Abstract: Papers of Hans Suess, an Austrian-born geochemist who pioneered radiocarbon dating techniques and was a founding faculty member of the University of California, San Diego. His papers span the years 1875-1991 and contain grant proposals, conference materials, subject files, photographs, and writings by Suess and others. The collection also contains correspondence with prominent scientists and UC San Diego faculty. Many of the correspondence files and the writings by Suess are in German. Creator: Suess, Hans Eduard, 1909- Acquisition Information Acquired 1991, 1994. Preferred Citation Hans Suess Papers, MSS 0199. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego. Biography Hans Eduard Suess was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1909. He was the son of Franz E. Suess, former professor of geology at the University of Vienna, and Olga Frenzl Suess. His grandfather was Eduard Suess, who wrote The Face of the Earth, an early work in geochemistry. Suess studied chemistry and physics at the University of Vienna where he received a Ph.D.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Origin of the Cosmic Elements and the Nuclear History of the Universe
    FEATURES ON THE ORIGIN OF THE COSMIC ELEMENTS AND THE NUCLEAR HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE 1 2 3 4 l Jordi Jose´ , Martin Asplund , Corinne Charbonel , Isabelle Cherchneff , Roland Diehl5, Andreas Korn6 and Friedrich-Karl Thielemann4 l 1 Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain – 2 Australian National University, Canberra, Australia – 3 University of Geneva, Switzerland – 4 University of Basel, Switzerland – 5 Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany – 6 Uppsala University, Sweden – DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/epn/2016401 The quest for the energy source of stars, capable of maintaining their long-lasting brightness, has puzzled physicists during centuries. Early suggestions, due to Julius R. von Mayer, John James Waterson, Hermann von Helmholtz, and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), among others, relied on the conversion of gravitational potential energy into heat. However, the age of the Sun inferred in this framework was only a few million years, a value clearly at odds with estimates based on geological records. EPN 47/4 15 FEATURES NUCLEAR History OF THE UNIVERSE b P. 15: SN 1994D, fter the serendipitous discovery of radioac- of abundances shows a complex pattern across ten orders a type Ia (or tivity by Antoine H. Becquerel in 1896, the of magnitude of abundances, with hydrogen and helium thermonuclear) supernova explosion focus shifted toward nuclear energy. Follow- being by far the most abundant species, with a second- spotted at the Aing a series of atomic mass measurements, ary peak towards iron at ~1/10000 of their abundance, outskirts of the spiral Francis W. Aston concluded in 1920 that four individual and again much lower abundances for heavier elements galaxy NGC 4526.
    [Show full text]
  • ORESKES House Committee Oversight Testimony SUBMIT
    Naomi Oreskes Professor of the History of Science Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Harvard University Cambridge, MA 02138 Testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Examining the Oil Industry’s Efforts to Suppress the Truth about Climate Change October 23, 2019 I. Introduction Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you today about the issue of man-made global warming, which affects all of our lives. My testimony today is based on 15 years of research, on the history of climate science, and on the history of attempts to undermine, distract attention from, and confuse the American people about that science. I come to this subject not as a politician or activist, but as a scholar and teacher. That said, the issue before us—man-made climate change—is so serious—so imperative—that at this moment in history, we must all become active to fix it, before the opportunity to do so is lost. This requires us to understand the reasons that we have failed to act so far—the forces that are responsible for our inaction—in order to overcome them before it is too late. II. The Science th Scientists have known since the late 19 century that carbon dioxide (CO2) added to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels has the potential to dramatically change the Earth’s climate. Until the 1950s, however, the limits of both theory and measurement made it difficult to say more about the problem that that. In the late 1950s, post-war advances, along with increased funding, made it possible to address the question in a sustained and rigorous way.
    [Show full text]
  • The Amazing Story Behind the Global Warming Scam | San Diego, Califo
    KUSI NEWS | The Amazing Story Behind the Global Warming Scam | San Diego, Califo ... Page 1 of 7 KUSI NEWS San Diego, California Print this article The Amazing Story Behind the Global Warming Scam Originally printed at http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/38574742.html By John Coleman January 28, 2009 (Revised and edited February 11, 2009) The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax us citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way: the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate. The last two bitter winters have led to a rise in public awareness that there is no runaway global warming. A majority of American citizens are now becoming skeptical of the claim that our carbon footprints, resulting from our use of fossil fuels, are going to lead to climatic calamities. But governments are not yet listening to the citizens. How did we ever get to this point where bad science is driving big government to punish the citizens for living the good life that fossil fuels provide for us? The story begins with an Oceanographer named Roger Revelle. He served with the Navy in World War II. After the war he became the Director of the Scripps Oceanographic Institute in La Jolla in San Diego, California. Revelle obtained major funding from the Navy to do measurements and research on the ocean around the Pacific Atolls where the US military was conducting post war atomic bomb tests.
    [Show full text]
  • The Callendar Effect Guy Stewart Callendar in 1934, About the Time He Turned His Attention to the CO2- Climate Question
    The Callendar Effect Guy Stewart Callendar in 1934, about the time he turned his attention to the CO2- climate question. The Callendar Effect The Life and Work of Guy Stewart Callendar (1898–1964), the Scientist Who Established the Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change James Rodger Fleming American Meteorological Society The Callendar Effect: The Life and Work of Guy Stewart Callendar (1898–1964), the Scientist Who Established the Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change © 2007 by James Rodger Fleming. Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this book in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided the source is acknowledged. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the American Meteorological Society 45 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02108 Also available from AMS Books: The Papers of Guy Stewart Callendar, Digital Edition on DVD, James Rodger Fleming and Jason Thomas Fleming, Eds. (Boston: American Meteorological Society, 2007). This research-quality digital archive includes Guy Stewart Callendar’s manuscript letters, papers, journals, documents, and family photographs. For a catalog of AMS Books, see www.ametsoc.org/pubs/books. To order, call (617) 227-2426, extension 686, or email [email protected]. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fleming, James Rodger. The Callendar effect : the life and times of Guy Stewart Callendar, the scientist who established the carbon dioxide theory of climate change / James Rodger Fleming. p.
    [Show full text]
  • From Natural History to the Nuclear Shell Model: Chemical Thinking in the Work of Mayer, Haxel, Jensen, and Suess
    Phys. perspect. 6 (2004) 295–309 1422-6944/04/030295–15 DOI 10.1007/s00016-003-0203-x From Natural History to the Nuclear Shell Model: Chemical Thinking in the Work of Mayer, Haxel, Jensen, and Suess Karen E. Johnson* In 1949 the nuclear shell model was discovered simultaneously in the United States and Germany. Both discoveries were the result of a nuclear scientist looking at geochemical and nuclear data with the eyes of a chemist. Maria Goeppert Mayer in the United States and Hans Suess in Ger- many both brought a chemist’s perspective to the problem;the theoretical solution was subsequently supplied independently by Mayer and Hans Jensen. Key words: History of physics; nuclear physics; history of chemistry; Maria Goeppert Mayer; Hans Edward Suess; Hans D. Jensen; Otto Haxel. Introduction The nuclear shell model, a highly successful scheme for accounting for the characteris- tics of many stable nuclei, is of fairly limited usefulness to most branches of chemistry. It has its origins, however, in chemistry and geochemistry. The data that provided the starting point for the shell model were supplied by geochemists, as was described recently by Helge Kragh.1 Here I take the argument one step further and look at the role that chemical reasoning, as well as chemical data, played in the independent and simultaneous discoveries of this model in the United States and Germany.As an exam- ple of the fruitfulness of interdisciplinary investigations, this story illustrates the impor- tance of bringing different philosophical perspectives to disciplinary work. In the Bohr model of the atom, one electron experiences a potential produced by the atomic nucleus and all of the other electrons in the atom.
    [Show full text]
  • Oral Histories in Meteoritics and Planetary Sciencexix: Klaus Keil
    Meteoritics & Planetary Science 1–16 (2012) doi: 10.1111/j.1945-5100.2012.01416.x Report Oral Histories in Meteoritics and Planetary Science—XIX: Klaus Keil Derek W. G. SEARS Space Science and Astrobiology Division, MS 245-3, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Mountain View, California 94035, USA E-mail: [email protected] (Received 25 June 2012; revision accepted 08 August 2012) Abstract–Klaus Keil (Fig. 1) grew up in Jena and became interested in meteorites as a student of Fritz Heide. His research for his Dr. rer. nat. became known to Hans Suess who––with some difficulty––arranged for him to move to La Jolla, via Mainz, 6 months before the borders of East Germany were closed. In La Jolla, Klaus became familiar with the electron microprobe, which has remained a central tool in his research and, with Kurt Fredriksson, he confirmed the existence of Urey and Craig’s chemical H and L chondrite groups, and added a third group, the LL chondrites. Klaus then moved to NASA Ames where he established a microprobe laboratory, published his definitive paper on enstatite chondrites, and led in the development of the Si(Li) detector and the EDS method of analysis. After 5 years at Ames, Klaus became director of the Institute of Meteoritics at the University of New Mexico where he built up one of the leading meteorite research groups while working on a wide variety of projects, including chondrite groups, chondrules, differentiated meteorites, lunar samples, and Hawai’ian basalts. The basalt studies led to a love of Hawai’i and a move to the University of Hawai’i in 1990, where he has continued a wide variety of meteorite projects, notably the role of volcanism on asteroids.
    [Show full text]
  • Compiled Records of Carbon Isotopes in Atmospheric CO2 for Historical Simulations in CMIP6
    Compiled records of carbon isotopes in atmospheric CO2 for historical simulations in CMIP6 Heather Graven1, Colin E. Allison2, David M. Etheridge2, Samuel Hammer3, Ralph F. 5 Keeling4, Ingeborg Levin3, Harro A. J. Meijer6, Mauro Rubino5, Pieter P. Tans7, Cathy M. 2 8 8 Trudinger , Bruce H. Vaughn , James W. C. White 1Department of Physics, Imperial College London, UK 2CSIRO Climate Science Centre, Oceans and Atmosphere, Aspendale, Australia 10 3Institut für Umweltphysik, Heidelberg University, Germany 4Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, USA 5Dipartimento di Matematica e Fisica, Università della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", Caserta, Italy 6Centre for Isotope Research, University of Groningen, The Netherlands 7National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, USA 15 8Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA Correspondence to: Heather Graven ([email protected]) 14 13 Abstract. The isotopic composition of carbon (Δ C and δ C) in atmospheric CO2 and in oceanic and terrestrial carbon reservoirs is influenced by anthropogenic emissions and by natural carbon exchanges, which can respond to and drive changes in climate. Simulations of 14C and 13C in the ocean and terrestrial components of Earth 20 System Models (ESMs) present opportunities for model evaluation and for investigation of carbon cycling, including anthropogenic CO2 emissions and uptake. The use of carbon isotopes in novel evaluation of the ESMs’ component ocean and terrestrial biosphere models and in new analyses of historical changes may improve predictions of future changes in the carbon cycle and climate system. We compile existing data to 14 13 produce records of Δ C and δ C in atmospheric CO2 for the historical period 1850-2015.
    [Show full text]
  • Dissertation FINAL
    MAKING GLOBAL WARMING GREEN: CLIMATE CHANGE AND AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTALISM, 1957-1992 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Joshua P. Howe July 2010 © 2010 by Joshua Proctor Howe. All Rights Reserved. Re-distributed by Stanford University under license with the author. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/ This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/cp892qc1059 ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Richard White, Primary Adviser I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Robert Proctor I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Jessica Riskin Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies. Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file in University Archives. iii Abstract Making Global Warming Green: Climate Change and American Environmentalism, 1957-1992 investigates how global climate change became a major issue in American environmental politics during the second half of the 20th Century.
    [Show full text]
  • Hans Suess Worked Especially on ↔ Exchange Equilibria of H2 + HDO HD + H2O
    NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HANS E. SUESS 1909–1993 A Biographical Memoir by HEINRICH WAENKE AND JAMES R. ARNOLD Any opinions expressed in this memoir are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Academy of Sciences. Biographical Memoirs, VOLUME 87 PUBLISHED 2005 BY THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS WASHINGTON, D.C. HANS E. SUESS December 16, 1909–September 20, 1993 BY HEINRICH WAENKE AND JAMES R. ARNOLD CONTRIBUTION BY HEINRICH WAENKE ANS E. SUESS WAS A member of a dynasty of famous H Austrian scientists. The founder of this dynasty was his grandfather Eduard Suess (1838-1914). He was a professor at the University of Vienna (1857-1908) and president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (1898-1911). He became well known in geology and paleontology, especially by his book The Face of the Earth (in German: Das Anlitz der Erde), which became fundamental in geology and geotectonics. For the first time he not only described geological phenomena but also tried to find physical and geological reasons for them. The book has been translated from German into all the major languages. Aside from his work as a scientist, Eduard Suess was engaged in politics and became the first member of the City Council of Vienna and later on a member of the Austrian Parliament. His name is also connected with a new system for the supply of water brought from the Alps to Vienna over about 200 km, which he designed and fought for its realization politically. The father of Hans E. Suess was Franz Eduard Suess (1867-1941).
    [Show full text]