John Ross (chemist)

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John Ross (born October 2, 1926 in Vienna , † February 18, 2017 in Palo Alto ) was an American chemist (physical chemistry). He was a professor at Stanford University .

Ross left Austria shortly before the Second World War with his parents because of anti-Semitic persecution under the National Socialists. He graduated from Queens College in New York City with a bachelor's degree in 1948 (where he did military service in the US Army from 1944 to 1946) and was trained in physical chemistry (properties of gas transport) by Isador Amdur at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1951. PhD. As a post-doctoral student he was at Yale University with John G. Kirkwood , where he studied statistical mechanics of irreversible processes. In 1953 he became an assistant professor and later professor at Brown Universityand from 1966 he was a professor at MIT ( Frederick George Keyes Professor of Chemistry). In 1975/76 he headed the chemistry faculty. From 1980 he was a professor at Stanford, from 1985 as a Camille and Henry Dreyfus professor . In 2001 he retired.

He dealt with chemical instabilities and oscillating reactions, thermodynamics of systems far from equilibrium, chemical computers and the efficiency of chemical and biological machines. In 1991 he and his students constructed a chemical computer that has the capabilities of a universal Turing machine . The logic states are macroscopic measured variables such as the concentration of chemical substances. In 1995 the analogue of a parallel computer followed.

In chemical kinetics, he dealt with the determination of complex reaction mechanisms, such as those that occur in biology, developing new approaches based on correlation functions.

He has received several honorary doctorates (Queens College, Weizmann Institute, Bordeaux). In 1992 he received the Irving Langmuir Award , the National Medal of Science in 1999 , the Peter Debye Award in 2001 , the Theodore William Richards Medal in 2004 and the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art First Class in 2002. In 1964 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , and since 1976 he has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences . He was also a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science .

Since 1971 he has been on the council of the Weizmann Institute . From 1960 to 1964 he was a Sloan Research Fellow , 1959/60 Guggenheim Fellow and 1966 Van der Waals Professor in Amsterdam.

Fonts

  • From the Determination of Complex Reaction Mechanisms to Systems Biology, Annual Reviews of Biochemistry, 77, 2008, 479-494
  • with AF Villaverde: Thermodynamics and Fluctuations Far From Equilibrium, Entropy, 12, 2010, pp. 2199-2243
  • with Stephen Berry, Stuart A. Rice Physical Chemistry , 2 volumes, Wiley 1980
  • with Stephen Berry, Stuart A. Rice Physical and Chemical Kinetics , Oxford University Press 2002

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004.
  2. ↑ Taylor Kubota: Pioneering Stanford physical chemist John Ross dies at 90th Stanford University, February 24, 2017, accessed February 24, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Ross, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American chemist
DATE OF BIRTH October 2, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH 18th February 2017
Place of death Palo Alto