Stuart A. Rice | |
|---|---|
| Born | Stuart Alan Rice (1932-01-06)January 6, 1932 New York City, U.S. |
| Died | December 22, 2024(2024-12-22) (aged 92) |
| Alma mater | Bronx High School of Science,Brooklyn College,Harvard University,Yale University |
| Awards | ACS Award in Pure Chemistry (1963) Peter Debye Award (1985) National Medal of Science (1999) Wolf Prize (2011) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Theoretical chemistry |
| Institutions | The University of Chicago |
Stuart Alan Rice (January 6, 1932 – December 22, 2024) was an Americantheoretical chemist andphysical chemist.[1] He was well known as a theoretical chemist who also performed experimental research, having spent much of his career working in multiple areas of physical chemistry. He was the Frank P. Hixon Distinguished ServiceProfessor at theUniversity of Chicago. During his tenure at the University of Chicago, Rice trained more than 100 Ph.D. students andpostdoctoral researchers.[2] He received theNational Medal of Science in 1999.[1]
Stuart Rice attended theBronx High School of Science,[3] received hisbachelor's degree in 1952 fromBrooklyn College, and earned hismaster's anddoctorate fromHarvard University in 1954 and 1955, respectively. He was almost unable to attend graduate school due to contractingtuberculosis, but was cured of the disease through an experimental treatment ofisoniazid andstreptomycin.[3] He remained at Harvard as a junior fellow for three years, although he spent the last two years of the fellowship doing research work atYale University's chemistry department. After the fellowship, he joined the faculty ofThe University of Chicago in 1957, where he remained until his death.[1][3]
Rice served the university in a wide variety of capacities during his fifty-seven year tenure. He served as the director of theJames Franck Institute (the university's center forphysical chemistry andcondensed matter physics) from 1961 to 1967. He was chairman of the department ofchemistry from 1971 to 1976 and was dean of the physical sciences division from 1981 to 1995.[1] He served as dean for theToyota Technological Institute at Chicago from October 2006 through October 2010 and as interim president of the institute from October 2010 to April 2013.
In addition to his work at the university, he was on the board of governors atTel Aviv University,[4] served as editor for the journalsChemical Physics Letters[5] andAdvances in Chemical Physics,[6] and co-authored several physical chemistrytextbooks withStephen Berry andJohn Ross.[7]
Rice began his scientific career as a high school student and published on this work.[8] He completed his doctoral dissertation underPaul Doty, contributing to the then-emerging field ofDNA research;[3] the project shared both experimental and theoretical components, which became a hallmark of his later work.[3]
During his time at Yale, Stuart Rice began to study the transport properties of liquids.[3] He helped to determine the properties of liquidnoble gases andmethane, while also exploring the theoretical background of transport in liquids as well, comparing the results to simulations ofLennard-Jones fluids.[3]
Following this work he helped to develop the theory of electronic excitations (excitons) in molecular crystals and liquids, eventually moving into the area of radiationless molecular transitions, beginning his own experimental work after the development of theBixon-Jortner model, while also working with collaborators on extending the theoretical model of these transitions.[3] This research led him to investigate the effects ofquantum chaos on excited molecules, and to couple the developing model of transitions with quantum chaos in order to attain control of the transition of excited molecules. This led to the field ofcoherent control, quantum control throughlaser excitation, which was developed by other scientists at the University of Chicago.[3]
At the same time, he also began work on understanding the electrical properties ofliquid metals, where the lack of translational orders frustrated attempts to understand theirelectronic band structure.[3] The discrepancy between the dielectric results ofreflectivity andellipsometry data of liquid mercury led to work on the nature ofconductivity at the liquid-vapor surface of liquid metal, ultimately showing that the existence ofion inhomogeneities at the interface led to electronic changes in the bulk liquid that persist for severalatomic diameters into a liquid.[3]
Smaller research topics that Rice published on include work on the chemistry of water, the theory of freezing liquids, the properties of monolayers on liquids, and confinedcolloidal systems, amongst others.[3]
Rice was famous at the University of Chicago for eating lunch almost every weekday at the university'sQuadrangle Club restaurant (a faculty club), where he dined over 9,000 times. Rice was known to sit at the head of the chemistry table, not because he was the most senior member of the department, but because he was very tall.[9]
Rice was married to Marian Coopersmith from 1952 until her death in 1994.[10] From 1997 to his own death, Rice was married to Ruth O'Brien. He died on December 22, 2024, at the age of 92.[11]
Rice was awarded theNational Medal of Science, the highest scientific prize awarded in the United States, in 1999. He was awarded theWolf Prize in Chemistry in 2011, along withKrzysztof Matyjaszewski andChing Tang.[12] He was a Fellow of both theNational Academy of Sciences and theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences[13][14] and a member of theAmerican Philosophical Society.[15] In 1970, Rice was awarded the Llewellyn John and Harriet ManchesterQuantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the nation’s oldest prize for undergraduate teaching, a highly esteemed faculty award atThe University of Chicago.[1]
Over the course of his long career Rice has shaped much debate on theoretical physical chemistry. He is cited on the National Medal of Science "for changing the very nature of modern physical chemistry through his research, teaching and writing, using imaginative approaches to both experiment and theory that have inspired a new generation of scientists."[16] With over 100doctoral students to his credit, Stuart Rice has had a great impact on the field of physical chemistry simply through the number of research scientists he has trained.[17] Theoretical chemistDavid Tannor, who is the Hermann Mayer Professorial Chair in the department of chemical physics at theWeizmann Institute of Science in Israel, did his post-doc work with Stuart Rice andDavid W. Oxtoby at the University of Chicago.[18][19][20] Paul Alivisatos, president of University of Chicago, who studied with Rice as an undergraduate, remembers his teaching as "exact and illuminating and inspiring. As long as he continued to speak, he rendered his difficult subject with simplicity and clarity."[21]
