Inorganic Chemistry
Fausto de Elhuyar (1755-1833)
Fausto de Elhuyar was a Spanish chemist, and the joint discoverer of tungsten with his brother Juan José Elhuyar in 1783. He was in charge, under a King of Spain commission, of organizing the School of Mines in México City and so was responsible of building an architectural jewel known as the "Palacio de Minería". Elhuyar left Mexico after the Mexican War of Independence, when most of the Spanish residents in Mexico were expelled.
John Dalton (1766-1844)
John Dalton was an English chemist, physicist, and meteorologist, best known for introducing the atomic theory into chemistry and for his work on human optics. Inspired by his own unusual perception of colour, he conducted the first ever research into colour blindness – a subject which subsequently became known as Daltonism.
By far Dalton’s most influential work in chemistry was his atomic theory. Attempts to trace precisely how Dalton developed this theory have proved futile; even Dalton’s own recollections on the subject are incomplete. He based his theory of partial pressures on the idea that only like atoms in a mixture of gases repel one another, whereas unlike atoms appear to react indifferently toward each other. This conceptualization explained why each gas in a mixture behaved independently.
Source: https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/diversity-in-science/scientists-with-disabilities/john-dalton/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalton; https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Dalton/Atomic-theory
Elizabeth Fulhame (fl. 1794)
Elizabeth Fulhame (fl. 1794) was an early British chemist who invented the concept of catalysis and discovered photoreduction. She describes catalysis as a process at length in her 1794 book An Essay On Combustion with a View to a New Art of Dying and Painting, wherein the Phlogistic and Antiphlogistic Hypotheses are Proved Erroneous. The book relates in painstaking detail her experiments with oxidation-reduction reactions, and the conclusions she draws regarding phlogiston theory, in which she disagrees with both the Phlogistians and Antiphlogistians.[1]
In 1798, the book was translated into German by Augustin Gottfried Ludwig Lentin as Versuche über die Wiederherstellung der Metalle durch Wasserstoffgas. In 1810, it was published in the United States, to much critical acclaim. That same year, Fulhame was made an honorary member of the Philadelphia Chemical Society. Thomas P. Smith applauded her work, stating that "Mrs. Fulhame has now laid such bold claims to chemistry that we can no longer deny the sex the privilege of participating in this science also."
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Fulhame; https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/pt.6.4.20200617a/full/; https://liviecampbell.medium.com/a-catalyst-for-change-26f968725018
Fanny Rysam Mulford Hitchcock (1851-1936)
Fanny Rysan Mulford Hitchcock was one of only 13 women to receive their doctorates in chemistry in the 1800s, and the first woman to receive a doctorate in Philosophy of Chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania. She made contributions to entomology, fish osteology, and plant pathology. She began her studies at Columbia University publishing several papers, and then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. She worked at many colleges including University of Berlin and University of Pennsylvania. She worked at the University of Pennsylvania for nineteen years and devoted her life to helping women pursuing an education at the university.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Rysan_Mulford_Hitchcock; Image by: http://www.archives.upenn.edu/people/1800s/hitchcock_fanny.html
Edith Humphrey (1875-1977)
Edith Ellen Humphrey was a British inorganic chemist who carried out pioneering work in co-ordination chemistry at the University of Zurich under Alfred Werner. She is thought to be the first British woman to obtain a doctorate in chemistry.
On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), 8 April 1991, a sample of the original crystals synthesized by Humphrey for her PhD were sent to them by the Swiss Committee of Chemistry, together with a modern CD spectrum of a solution of one crystal. This box of crystals remains on display in the exhibition room of the RSC.
Enrique J. Barán
Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). Dr. Barán held the Inorganic Chemistry Chair at the Universidad Nacional de la Plata during 30 years, Emeritus Professor. His awards include the Labriola-Prize; Konex Foundation Platinum Prize; H.J. Schumacher-Prize, Nantional Academy for the Advance of Science, Argentina, among others. He also authored the book Quimica Bioinorganica.
Source: https://twitter.com/LatinXChem/status/1284209110552940544
Carlos A. Murillo (1951-2021)
Dr. Murillo led the Chemistry Instrumentation program (including MRI) with dedication and effectiveness, having been an able advocate since his NSF arrival from Texas A&M (TAMU) in 2007. He also managed the ChemMatCARS award, supporting and growing a national synchrotron X-ray facility for chemistry and materials research at the Advanced Photon Source in Illinois. Throughout his years at NSF, he remained research-active via adjunct appointments at TAMU and U. Texas-El Paso. Among his notable research contributions were the development of methods for the synthesis of compounds with metal-metal bonds, and improved understanding of the structure and behavior of these interesting compounds.
Carlos was a founding member of the National Academy of Sciences of Costa Rica, an AAAS Fellow, and an author of more than 300 scientific publications and two books: Advanced Inorganic Chemistry (with co-authors F. Albert Cotton, Nobel Laureate Geoffrey Wilkinson, and Manfred Bochmann) and Multiple Bonds Between Metal Atoms (with co-authors F. Albert Cotton and Richard A. Walton).
Source: https://twitter.com/LatinXChem/status/1283808737107402753; https://cen.acs.org/people/obituaries/Obituary-CarlosMurillo/100/i5; https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=304218&org=CHE
Gregory L. Hillhouse (1944-2014)
Scientists long considered nitrenes, highly reactive molecules based on nitrogen, too difficult to use. It seemed impossible to isolate a stable nitrene based on late transition metals because those metals are so rich in electrons. Gregory L. Hillhouse, born March 1, 1955, showed he could make nitrenes with late transition metals, opening up new reactions for creating important organic molecules.
Hillhouse took many years to come out as gay, afraid it might hurt his career, according to a remembrance in The Chemists Club, a University of Chicago publication. In the 1990s, shaken by a close friend’s death, he began volunteering at a Chicago AIDS hospice, where he prepared gourmet meals each weekend. He also became a role model for younger LGBTQ+ chemists. “While I wasn’t out in college, Greg helped me feel OK being myself and feel comfortable being out in the chemistry community now,” says Matthew Joannou, who took Hillhouse’s class as a University of Chicago undergraduate.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_L._Hillhouse; https://cen.acs.org/people/lgbtq-scientist-chemist-history/99/web/2021/06?utm_source=Essential
Jacqueline Barton
Jacqueline earned her PhD in Inorganic Chemistry at Columbia University where she studied transition-metal complexes and their possible applications to chemotherapy. After a post-doc at Bell Labs and Yale University, she became a professor at Hunter College. She has held positions at Columbia University, Caltech and California Institute of Technology..
Barton introduced the application of transition metal complexes to probe recognition and reactions of double helical DNA. She has designed chiral metal complexes which mimic the properties of DNA-binding proteins, allowing other researchers the capability to simulate and analyze experiments in this nature. Barton additionally established that DNA charge transport chemistry is extremely sensitive to intervening perturbations in the DNA base stack, as with single base mismatches or lesions. This discovery has been a cornerstone for the development of DNA-based electrochemical sensors
Nancy Williams
Professor Nancy Williams is an inorganic chemist specializing in organometallic chemistry and the teaching of inorganic chemistry at the undergraduate level. She is a founding member of IONiC (the Interactive Online Network of Inorganic Chemists) and its website VIPEr (the Virtual Inorganic Pedagogical Educational Resource, www.ionicviper.org), an effort dedicated to harnessing the power of social networks on the web to improve undergraduate education.
Professor Nancy Williams came out as a queer, transgender woman in 2013, and has been active in voter canvassing efforts intended to protect trans rights and reduce prejudice against trans people in Los Angeles, Miami, and Tacoma.
Source: https://womensmediacenter.com/shesource/expert/professor-nancy-s-b-williams-ph-d; https://chemistry.stanford.edu/events/chemaims-seminar-professor-nancy-s-b-williams-claremont-mckenna-college
Xie Yi (b. 1967)
Prof. Yi Xie received her B.S. in Xiamen University (1988) and Ph.D. in University of Science and Technology of China (USTC,1996). In May 1996, she joined the faculty at the Department of Chemistry, USTC. She is now a Principal Investigator (PI) of Department of Nanomaterials and Nanochemistry, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale and a full professor of Department of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China. She is also a recipient of many awards, including China Young Scientist Award (2002), China Young Female Scientist Award (2006), Chinese Academy of Sciences-Bayer Young Scientist Award (2003), the Cheung Kong Scholar, Ministry of Education (2000).
Prof. Xie and her group are pursuing cutting-edge research at four major frontiers, namely, nanotechnology, materials chemistry, energy science and theoretical physics. In particular, her research focuses on the preparation and assembly of inorganic functional nanomaterials and nanostructures.
Darryl Boyd
Dr. Boyd is a synthetic inorganic and electrochemist by training whose current research interests encompass aspects of polymer chemistry, inorganic chemistry and materials science. His recent work has emphasized photoinitiated thiol click chemistry, inverse vulcanization, development of luminescent polymer nanocomposites for 3D printing, and surface modification of nanostructured substrates. Much of his current work has a particular focus on fabricating materials with, and/or modifying materials to have, unique infrared optical transmittance properties.
Source: https://darrylboydphd.weebly.com/ Image by: https://cen.acs.org/materials/polymers/Darryl-Boyd/96/i33
Jas Pal Badyal
Badyal is internationally recognised for his pioneering research on the functionalisation of solid surfaces and deposition of functional nanolayers. Badyal has invented a wide range of novel surfaces for technological and societal applications. These have been underpinned by the investigation of fundamental mechanisms and scale-up. Examples include: antibacterial, fog harvesting, catalysis, non-fouling, optochiral switches, filtration, biochips, super-repellency, and nano-actuation.
Badyal is committed to solving big problems with very small tools: layers of functional molecules only a few nanometers thick. His ultrathin coatings have entered the marketplace on clothing, footwear, and electronics. They impart water-repellent, antibacterial abilities to around three-quarters of the world’s hearing aids and more than 100 million cell phones.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jas_Pal_Badyal; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5879479/
Roxanne Kieltyka
Roxanne was born in Toronto, Canada. She graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor in Materials Chemistry in June 2003. Shortly thereafter, she joined the group of Prof. Hanadi Sleiman at McGill University, where she received her PhD degree in 2009. Her thesis was on the development of novel platinum-based complexes for the targeting of G-quadruplexes as an anticancer therapy. She then performed her postdoctoral work in the group of Prof. E.W. Meijer on the synthesis of supramolecular polymers for application in the biomedical field. Since 2013, Roxanne is an Assistant Professor within the Supramolecular and Biomaterials Chemistry group at Leiden University.
Source: https://cen.acs.org/biological-chemistry/tissue-engineering/Roxanne-Kieltyka/96/i33
Sibrina Collins
Sibrina Nichelle Collins is an inorganic chemist who specializes in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education and utilizing pop culture as a pedagogical tool to engage young people in the STEM fields. She earned her B.A. in chemistry (cum laude) from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan in 1994. She later earned an M.S. and PhD in the field of inorganic chemistry from The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.
Over the course of her career, Dr. Collins has mentored 17 undergraduate chemistry students, while a faculty member at Claflin University, an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) in Orangeburg, SC and the College of Wooster in Wooster, OH. She has published peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Inorganic Chemistry, Acta Crystallographia, Journal of Chemical Education, the Bulletin for the History of Chemistry, the Chemical Educator, Nature Chemistry and Nature. Dr. Collins is the founding executive director of the Marburger STEM Center on the campus of Lawrence Technological University. The Marburger STEM Center is the clearinghouse of campus-wide STEM initiatives at LTU, which promotes inclusiveness, excellence, creativity and innovation.
Source: https://www.aaas-iuse.org/team/sibrina-collins-ph-d/; http://sibrinaspeaks.com/
Amy Prieto
Prieto decided to pursue battery research when she started as an assistant professor of chemistry at Colorado State University in 2005. The field was a perfect bridge between her Ph.D. studies in solid-state materials for electronic devices and her postdoctoral work in measuring transport properties of nanostructured materials. It turned out to be a fruitful decision. She has patented novel battery materials and a unique manufacturing process that together revamp decades-old lithium-ion technology. Her lithium-ion battery, built on a foundation of electroplated copper foam, is more flexible, safer, less expensive, and more environmentally friendly than batteries currently on the market
Source: https://cen.acs.org/materials/energy-storage/Entrepreneur-rethinks-lithium-ion-batteries/96/i29; https://sites.chem.colostate.edu/prietolab/Amy%20Prieto.html
Gregory H. Robinson
Gregory H. Robinson is an American chemist whose research interests reside in synthetic inorganic chemistry, with a particular emphasis on the main group (earth abundant) elements. His research concerns unusual bonding motifs and low oxidation state chemistry of molecules containing main group elements such as boron, gallium, germanium, phosphorus, magnesium, and silicon. Robinson is currently a Foundation Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of Georgia. Robinson has published over 150 research articles.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_H._Robinson; https://axial.acs.org/2021/02/11/celebrating-african-american-chemists-gregory-h-robinson/
Nancy Scott Burke Williams
Some carbon-carbon and carbon-hydrogen bonds are incredibly difficult for chemists to make and break. But metals like platinum can help create and shatter these stable bonds. Understanding how platinum can accomplish this feat has been the focus of Nancy Scott Burke Williams’s career. Over the past 3 decades, Williams, a chemistry professor in the W.M. Keck Science Department of Claremont McKenna, Pitzer, and Scripps Colleges, has greatly contributed to scientists’ understanding of platinum’s special bond-breaking and bond-making qualities. She has also redefined how inorganic chemistry is taught in colleges across the US and—as a transgender woman—helped pave the road for future queer chemists.
Mónica Pérez-Temprano
While most chemists wait until a reaction works before trying to understand its steps in detail, Pérez-Temprano advocates probing the mechanisms of transition-metal catalysts alongside reaction development—especially when things aren't yet running smoothly. When something's not working, it means a reaction intermediate failed to form efficiently, she explains. Stabilizing that intermediate could make a transformation more efficient or point to new reactivity.
Since starting her lab at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia, Pérez-Temprano has used cobalt as a test case for the theory that reactivity of intermediates can guide reaction design. Cobalt and other first-row transition metals are less expensive and more sustainable than the precious metals, such as palladium, that chemists typically use to forge new bonds. Moreover, catalysts containing first-row transition metals can potentially yield intermediates—and thus products—that catalysts containing precious metals cannot.
Source: https://cen.acs.org/synthesis/catalysis/Monica-Perez-Temprano/96/i33
Tracy L. Johnson
Tracy L. Johnson is the Keith and Cecilia Terasaki Presidential Endowed Chair in the Life Sciences and Professor of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is also a professor of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In May 2020, she was named Dean of the UCLA Division of Life Sciences.
Johnson's research focuses on understanding gene regulation, chromatin modification, RNA splicing and how regulating splicing allows cells to respond to their environment. Specifically, her group studies the spliceosome, a macromolecular "machine" made of five subunits that interacts with a pre-messenger RNA to produce an edited version, leading to appropriate translation into proteins. Her group has provided evidence that spliceosome assembly around a nascent mRNA transcript is regulated by histone modifications in the chromatin of the transcribed region.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracy_L._Johnson; https://johnsonlab.mcdb.ucla.edu/labmembers/