Richard J. Saykally

Richard James Saykally (born September 10, 1947) is an American chemist and the Class of 1932 Endowed Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studies the molecular characteristics of water and aqueous solutions.

Biography Saykally was born in Rhinelander, Wisconsin and completed his undergraduate education at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison under R. Claude Woods in 1977, then completed postgraduate research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology with Kenneth Melvin Evenson. He joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley in 1979. His group applied terahertz laser vibration-rotation-tunneling spectroscopy to map the hydrogen bonding in water clusters and develop accurate potentials for liquid water. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, and the Royal Society of Chemistry. The American Chemical Society recognized him with the Irving Langmuir Award in Chemical Physics in 2000, the Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry in 2009, and the E. Bright Wilson Award in Spectroscopy in 2018.