1969: Kenneth S. Pitzer (1914–1997)

Kenneth S. Pitzer garnered distinction as a scientist, educator, and philanthropist. Not only was he a leading theoretical chemist of the 20th century, but he also served as an administrator at some the most respected research universities in the U.S. That he was capable of doing both to very high standards is a testament to his achievements.

His role as a university administrator is not entirely surprising. He was born in 1914 in Pomona, Calif., to a father, Russell K. Pitzer, who was a lawyer, orange grower, and banker. His mother, Flora Sanborn Pitzer, had been a mathematics teacher. His father helped develop the Claremont Colleges, including Harvey Mudd College, Pitzer College, and what is now called Claremont McKenna College.

Pitzer earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry in 1935 from California Institute of Technology. In his first year there, he started research work with Arthur A. Noyes on oxidation-reduction reactions of silver salts in solution. Pitzer published his first independent paper in 1935 on the crystal structure of a perrhenate salt at the suggestion of Linus Pauling.

After earning his undergraduate degree, Pitzer attended the University of California, Berkeley, and completed his doctorate in just two years. He took a position as an instructor at UC Berkeley in 1937. By 1945, he had become a full professor, despite interruptions for military service. During World War II, he worked on military research at the Maryland Research Laboratory, serving as its technical director during 1943–44.

After the war, Pitzer returned to UC Berkeley, but subsequently left to begin what would stretch into decades of public service and administrative work. In 1949, he became the first director of research at the Atomic Energy Commission, which under his leadership started funding fundamental research. He returned again to UC Berkeley in 1951 and served as dean of the College of Chemistry through 1960.

In 1961, Pitzer became the third president of Rice University in Houston. At the time, Rice was a regional technical institute, and Pitzer helped it transition into a nationally recognized university. This process included racially integrating the university, recruiting new faculty, adding academic programs, and constructing new buildings.

Subsequently, Pitzer became president of Stanford University in 1968. He led the university through the turbulent period of the late 1960s. In 1971, he returned to his role as professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley.

Throughout his administrative career, Pitzer managed, remarkably, to maintain a research program. His work included using quantum and statistical mechanics to explain the thermodynamic and conformational properties of molecules. He pioneered quantum scattering theory for describing chemical reactions and contributed to the statistical theory of liquids, solids, and solutions.

He was a prolific contributor to the scientific literature, publishing more than 334 papers—about half of those between 1935 and 1960. While he was Rice president, he worked with only postdoctoral students and published about 30 papers, but abandoned research while heading Stanford. Upon returning to UC Berkeley at age 57, he restarted his research and continued working even beyond his retirement from teaching in 1984. In this latter part of his career, he published 140 papers. He is considered the founder of modern theoretical chemistry at UC Berkeley, where the Pitzer Center for Theoretical Chemistry was created in 1999.—Ann Thayer

Chemical & Engineering News

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