Gerhard L. Closs

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Gerhard Ludwig Closs (born May 1, 1928 in Elberfeld , today in Wuppertal ; † May 24, 1992 in Palos Park , Illinois ) was an American chemist (physical organic chemistry). He was a professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago .

Life

Closs was drafted into the Wehrmacht at the age of 16 and seriously wounded on the Eastern Front. He studied and did his doctorate at the University of Tübingen under Georg Wittig and went to the USA in 1955 as a post-doctoral student at Harvard University to study with Robert B. Woodward , where he worked on the synthesis of chlorophyll . From 1957 he was assistant professor (then for chemistry of natural products) and from 1963 professor at the University of Chicago, where he temporarily headed the chemistry faculty. He was also head of chemistry at Argonne National Laboratory for three years . In Chicago he became a Michelson Distinguished Service Professor . In 1962 he became a Sloan Research Fellow .

Closs was a leader in the chemistry of carbenes from the late 1950s , using new methods such as ESR and ENDOR at that time and using chemically induced dynamic nuclear polarization ( CIDNP spectroscopy ) there (as one of the first applications of this technique) in the mid-1960s . This made him a pioneer in the application of magnetic resonance to the characterization of intermediate products of chemical reactions. He made important contributions to the study of various photosynthetic pigments, specifically chlorophyll, one of his main research topics. From the end of the 1970s, he worked on electron transfer reactions.

In his early days he also tested mushroom drugs for a research project.

In 1991 he received the Arthur C. Cope Award , in 1971 the Jean Servas Stas Medal from the Belgian Chemical Society and in 1974 the James Flack Norris Award from the ACS. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1975) and the National Academy of Sciences (1974). An award from the Inter-American Photochemical Association is named after him.

He was a regular at Bell Laboratories , gave the Bayer lecture at the University of Cologne, was a Merck Lecturer at Rutgers University and visiting professor at Yale University .

He had been married to chemist Lieselotte Pohmer (also a doctoral student from Wittig) since 1956, with whom he collaborated and published. In 1992 he died of a heart attack in his home.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data, publications and academic family tree of Gerhard L. Closs at academictree.org, accessed on January 28, 2018.
  2. ↑ Tenure from 1961
  3. ^ GL Closs, NW Gable Studies toward the isolation of the active constituents of Panaeolous venenosus , Mycologia 11 (1959): 211-216. With reproduction of a questionnaire by Closs under the influence of fungal drugs
personal data
SURNAME Closs, Gerhard L.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Closs, Gerhard Ludwig (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American chemist
DATE OF BIRTH May 1, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Elberfeld (now part of Wuppertal )
DATE OF DEATH May 24, 1992
Place of death Palos Park (Illinois)