About Professor Kelly

T. ROSS KELLY

THOMAS A. AND MARGARET A. VANDERSLICE PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY

T. Ross Kelly was born in 1942 and grew up in what was then the small town of Davis, CA. His interest in chemistry was first stimulated by a Gilbert chemistry set (which in those days contained powdered magnesium and other good things), and was nurtured in 1959 by a summer-long science program for high school students at the Loomis School in Connecticut sponsored by National Science Foundation (stimulated by the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957). He received a B.S. in Chemistry (Honors) from the College of The Holy Cross in 1964, a Ph.D. in 1968 from the University of California, Berkeley with Clayton Heathcock, and then carried out a National Institutes of Health-sponsored Postdoctoral study with James B. Hendrickson at Brandeis University. Kelly joined the faculty at Boston College in 1969, where he rose through the ranks and was named Thomas A. and Margaret A. Vanderslice Professor of Chemistry in 1989. Among the awards Kelly has received are an NIH Career Development Award (1975-1980), an Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society (1996), and election as fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2007. Kelly has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers in various fields of organic chemistry, his particular interests being organic synthesis, natural products, and molecular devices. In 1999, he and his associates reported in Nature the first prototype of a rationally designed molecular motor.

Since starting at Boston College, Professor Kelly has taught courses at both the Undergraduate and Graduate level, with Introductory Organic Chemistry I and II being his most frequent and favorite assignment. Professor Kelly was selected as the 2004 Teacher of the Year by the Boston College Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. More than 1,000 of his students have gone on to become physicians.

Dr. Kelly has appeared on Modern Marvels on the History Channel, on the Boston ABC affiliate WCVB TV show Chronicle and, more dubiously, Da Ali G Show. He is married and has two children.