Mosher Award Reception and Lecture for Professor Richard Zare

Please join us for this event to help celebrate Dick Zare!

• Date: February 24 
• Time: 5:30-7:00pm Wine tasting, heavy hors d’oeuvres, wine, and networking reception; 7:00-8:00pm Mosher lecture and award presentation
• Location: Stanford University, Sapp Center for Science Teaching and Learning, 376 Lomita Dr, Stanford, CA 94305 (free parking after 4pm).  View on Stanford map (shows visitor parking). View on Google Maps
• Cost: $20 regular/$10 students (cash-only, pay at the door).  Show photo ID if you want to drink wine.
• Registration required. (Registration deadline: February 18 at Midnight)
• Please see accompanying article
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Title: Recalling Adventures in the Stanford Chemistry Department

Abstract:

I have been a member of the Stanford Chemistry Department for over 40 years, serving six years as its chair (2006 -2011). During this time, I have witnessed some amazing changes, and I want to take this opportunity to tell you some stories about what it has been like, stories about teaching, stories about research, and stories of what it was like to be chair. I am reminded of the opening sentence of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” Hopefully, my presentation will not emulate this sentence in length or in extremes, but I do hope to provide some insight to what it was like to be here at Stanford during this period that saw the Stanford Chemistry Department grow so much in strength.

Bio:

“A pioneer in the use of lasers to study chemical reactions at the molecular level, Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor Richard N. Zare pursues diverse theoretical and experimental interests in physical chemistry and nanoscale chemical analysis. The Zarelab has made a broad impact in analytic chemistry with development of laser-induced fluorescence to study reaction dynamics, and seminal contributions to understanding of molecular collision processes. The group continues to invent tools and measurement techniques to study phenomena from reaction in microdroplets to drug delivery.

Born in 1939 in Cleveland, Ohio, Professor Zare trained in physical and analytical chemistry at Harvard University (B.A. 1961, Ph.D. 1964). His doctoral study under Professor Dudley Herschbach explored photodissociation dynamics. After faculty positions spanning chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, chemistry, physics and astrophysics at the University of Colorado, and chemistry at Columbia University, he joined the Stanford chemistry faculty in 1977. He has taught an introductory chemistry class every year since. As a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor since 2006, Professor Zare has also developed a course introducing undergraduates to hands-on interdisciplinary research, combining physics, and biology to explore how living systems use molecular interactions with light for vision, photosynthesis and more. Professor Zare served as chair of the Department of Chemistry from 2005 to 2011, and has helped to guide scientific policy as chairman of several national and international science boards. His dedication to research and teaching has been recognized in many awards, including the National Medal of Science, the Wolf Prize in Chemistry, and the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring. Among other honors, Professor Zare is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He has also received 11 honorary doctorates.

Current research in the Zarelab explores wide-ranging questions in physical and analytical chemistry, from the study of elementary chemical reactions to chemical analysis of extraterrestrial materials. The major focus of these efforts is chemical analysis on the nanoscale. The team has devised tools and techniques to examine molecules in extremely tiny volumes – the volumes characteristic of what is found in heterogeneous structures in mineral samples or in the contents of cells and subcellular compartments. Group members have also made contributions to the chemical analysis of liquid samples separated using a capillary format by electrophoresis or electrochromatography. Some “firsts” include the use of cavity ring-down spectroscopy to analyze trace species in solution, development of detectors for capillary electrophoresis based on the techniques of laser-induced fluorescence, and CCD imaging, and the use of mass spectrometric imaging of tissue samples by means of desorption electrospray ionization.”

Please visit the Zarelab website to learn more: https://web.stanford.edu/group/Zarelab/

Source for biographical information: The text above was copied from Professor Zare’s entry in Stanford Profiles.