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Resources
Special Seminars
Inorganic Lectures
Distinguished Lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry
The first Ph.D. thesis in chemistry at Northwestern University was granted in 1896 for an inorganic topic, The Hydrolysis of Ferric Chloride. However, inorganic chemistry developed very slowly in the U.S. prior to the Second World War. In 1946, the Department hired the late Fred Basolo. He soon teamed up with a contemporary, Ralph Pearson, who initially was a physical organic chemist. Fred and Ralph published 53 joint papers as well as the highly influential book, Kinetics and Mechanisms of Inorganic Reactions. This was a renaissance period for inorganic chemistry and the discipline developed rapidly throughout the country. At Northwestern the inorganic faculty grew and continues to do so. Thus, A. Louis Allred (1956, retired), Duward Shriver (1961, retired), James Ibers (1964), Brian Hoffman (1967, also physical chemistry), Tobin Marks (1970), Kenneth Poeppelmeier (1984), Thomas O'Halloran (1986), Joseph Hupp (1986, also physical chemistry), Chad Mirkin (1991), Hilary Godwin (1996, now at UCLA), Thomas Meade (2003), and Mercouri Kanatzidis (2006) have been or are currently active researchers in inorganic chemistry at Northwestern. They have established vigorous research programs ranging from coordination chemistry and organometallic chemistry to solid-state chemistry and bioinorganic chemistry. The boundaries between subdisciplines are highly permeable at Northwestern and major contributions to inorganic chemistry have been made by other faculty members who teach and do research in physical and organic chemistry, including Joseph Lambert, SonBinh Nguyen, Mark Ratner, and Franz Geiger.
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