Oscar K. Rice

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Oscar Knefler Rice (born February 12, 1903 in Chicago , † May 7, 1978 in Chapel Hill (North Carolina) ) was an American chemist.

Life

Rice lost his father at the age of six months and was raised by his mother and aunt, who enabled him to study despite limited financial possibilities (his mother worked as a secretary). He studied chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley with a bachelor's degree in 1924 and a doctorate in 1926. He then conducted research at Berkeley and at Caltech , and was a Fellow of the National Research Council at the University of Leipzig in 1929/30 (at the Institute for Theoretical Physics with Werner Heisenberg , Eugene Wigner , Michael Polanyi , Felix Bloch ) and from 1930 to 1935 instructor in chemistry at Harvard University . In 1931 he was a lecturer at Princeton University . 1935/36 he was again in Berkeley and from Associate Professor and 1943 Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , from 1959 as Kenan Professor of Chemistry. In 1975 he retired.

In 1946/47 he was chief chemist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory . During the Second World War he dealt with the burning of rocket fuel. In 1968 he was visiting professor at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and in 1969 at the Georgia Institute of Technology .

He dealt with physical chemistry. Initially with the theory of colloids and surface tension and in the early years of quantum mechanics with the quantum theory of atoms and molecules, where he developed a theory of chemical reaction rates ( RRKM theory ). Later he dealt with the statistical mechanics of critical phenomena, including superfluid helium.

In 1932 he received the second prize in pure chemistry from the American Chemical Society (after Linus Pauling ). In 1964 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences . In 1970 he received the Peter Debye Award . In 1978 he was posthumously awarded a Sc.D. his university. He was a fellow of the American Physical Society .

He had been married since 1947 and had two adoptive daughters from Germany.

Fonts

  • Electronic structure and chemical binding, McGraw Hill 1940
  • Statistical mechanics, thermodynamics and kinetics, Freeman 1967
  • with HC Ramsperger Theories of unimolecular gas reactions at low pressure , 2 parts, J. Am. Chem. Soc., Vol. 49, 1927, pp. 1617-1629, Vol. 50, 1928, pp. 617-620
  • The quantum theory of quasi-unimolecular gas reactions, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., Vol. 14, 1928, pp. 113-118
  • Perturbation in molecules and the theory of predissociation and diffuse spectra, Phys. Rev., Volume 33, 1929, pp. 748-759, Part 2, Volume 35, 1930, 1551-1558
  • On the effect of resonance in the exchange of excitation energy, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., Vol. 37, 1931, pp. 1187-89, 1551-2

literature

  • Benjamin Widom, Rudolph Marcus, Biographical Memoirs National Academy of Sciences 1989, pdf

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ At that time he was concerned with predissociation and inelastic molecular scattering
  2. ^ After Rice, Herman C. Ramsperger, Louis Kassel, RA Marcus
personal data
SURNAME Rice, Oscar K.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rice, Oscar Knefler
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American chemist
DATE OF BIRTH February 12, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago
DATE OF DEATH May 7, 1978
Place of death Chapel Hill, North Carolina