Lauri Vaska

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Lauri Vaska (born May 7, 1925 in Rakvere , Estonia , † November 15, 2015 in Basking Ridge , New Jersey ) was an Estonian -US chemist .

life and work

Lauri Vaska was born to Jakob and Emilie Vaska in Rakvere, East Estonia. From 1933 to 1936 he attended elementary school in what is now the Tallinn district of Hiiu , then from 1936 to 1940 the renowned Riiklik Inglise Kolledž in the Estonian capital. From 1940 to 1942 he studied at the 9th Tallinna Keskkool and in 1942/43 at a high school in Rakvere. From 1943 to 1945, Vaska took part in the Second World War as a soldier on the German side . At the end of the war he fled to Germany from the Soviet occupation of Estonia .

He studied at the Baltic University in Hamburg in 1946 and later at the University of Göttingen , where he obtained his intermediate diploma. He moved to the University of Texas , where he received his PhD in inorganic chemistry . This was followed by postdoctoral -Aufenthalte at Northwestern University in the field of magnetochemistry . This was followed in 1957 as a fellow at the Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh , where he stayed for seven years. Vaska then went to Clarkson University in Potsdam , New York as an Associate Professor , where he retired in 1990.

Vaska has published about 80 articles on coordination chemistry of transition metals , homogeneous catalysis, and bioinorganic chemistry , his years at Mellon being very productive. With John W. Di Luzio, he described an iridium complex in 1962 , which became known as Vaska's complex , trans -IrCl (CO) (P (C 6 H 5 ) 3 ) 2 He showed that this complex carried out a series of reactions with small Molecules, such as the oxidative addition of hydrogen. He also studied the reversible addition of oxygen to the complex. He discovered oxidative addition as one of the central steps in homogeneous catalysis.

honors and awards

Vaska has received numerous awards and honors, including the Boris Pregel Award for Research in Chemical Physics in 1971, and a 1981 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for "Pioneering the Organometallic Chemistry of Transition Metals and Synthetic Oxygen".

Private life

Lauri Vaska was married to the Texan artist Elaine Tucker. The couple had four sons and a daughter. He died on November 15, 2015, at the age of 90 in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.

Web links

  • CV (Estonian)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ L. Vaska and JW DiLuzio: carbonyl and hydrido-carbonyl Complexes of Iridium by Reaction with Alcohols. Hydrido Complexes by Reaction with Acid . In: Journal of the American Chemical Society . 83, No. 12, 1961, pp. 2784-5. doi : 10.1021 / ja01473a054 .
  2. ↑ L. Vaska and JW DiLuzio: Activation of Hydrogen by a Transition Metal Complex at Normal Conditions Leading to a Stable Molecular dihydride . In: Journal of the American Chemical Society . 84, No. 4, 1962, pp. 679-680. doi : 10.1021 / ja00863a040 .
  3. ^ Vaska, Lauri (Estonian).
  4. ↑ Dr. Lauri Vaska - Obituary. In: legacy.com. November 18, 2015, accessed November 21, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Vaska, Lauri
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Estonian-American chemist
DATE OF BIRTH May 7, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Rakvere , Estonia
DATE OF DEATH 15th November 2015
Place of death Basking Ridge , New Jersey , United States