R. Stephen Berry

Richard Stephen Berry (April 9, 1931 – July 26, 2020) was an American professor of physical chemistry.

He was the James Franck Distinguished Service Professor, emeritus, at The University of Chicago. He was also special advisor for national security to the director, at Argonne National Laboratory.

Career and research A native of Denver, Colorado, Berry joined the Chicago faculty in 1964, having been an assistant professor at Yale University and, between 1957 and 1960, an instructor at the University of Michigan. At the University of Chicago, he has been a member of the department of chemistry, the James Franck Institute, the College, and, for many years, the Committee and then the School of Public Policy Studies. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1983.

His scientific studies have included both experimental and theoretical work. His doctoral thesis, directed by William Moffitt, was on the subject of the electronic structure of butadiene. He then went on to study alkali halides in the gas phase, first at the University of Michigan and then at Yale, using shock waves to produce sufficient dissociation of the molecules to ions to make it feasible to observe the photodetachment spectra of the halide ions, thus determining the electron affinities of the halogen atoms to four or five significant figures. He worked at Michigan with Martin Stiles to observe the free benzyne in the gas phase, and then, at Yale, with a graduate student Margaret Emery and an undergraduate Jon Clardy, they found the meta and para isomers of benzyne. He also worked with Walter Lwowski to study nitrenes in the gas phase.

Publications Books 2019 Three laws of nature: a little book on thermodynamics. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2002 (with Stuart A. Rice and John Ross) Physical and chemical kinetics (2nd. ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. 2000 (with Stuart A. Rice and John Ross) Physical chemistry (2nd. ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. 2000 (with V. Kazakov, S. Sieniutycz, Z. Szwast and A. M. Tsirlin) Thermodynamic optimization of finite-time processes. Chichester; New York: Wiley. 1991 Understanding energy: energy, entropy, and thermodynamics for everyman. Singapore; New Jersey: World Scientific. 1979 (with Linda Gaines and Thomas Veach Long II) TOSCA, the total social cost of coal and nuclear power. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Pub. Co. 1978 (with Margaret Lounsbury and Sandra Hebenstreit) Resource analysis: Water and energy as linked resources (WRC Research Report NO. 134). University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Water Resources Center.