Richard Zare

Richard Neil Zare (born November 19, 1939, in Cleveland, Ohio) is the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science and a Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University. Throughout his career, Zare has made a considerable impact in physical chemistry and analytical chemistry, particularly through the development of laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) and the study of chemical reactions at the molecular and nanoscale level. and a fellow of the Association for Women in Science (AWIS) as of 2008. with Herschbach at Harvard in 1964.

Career Zare joined Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an assistant professor in 1965. From 1966 to 1969, he was jointly appointed in the departments of chemistry, physics and astrophysics at JILA at the University of Colorado Boulder. In 1969 he became a full professor in the department of chemistry at Columbia University. He was named the Higgins Professor of Natural Science at Columbia in 1975.

In 1977 Zare accepted a position as a full professor of chemistry at Stanford University, becoming the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science in 1987. He served as chair of the chemistry department from 2005 to 2011.

Zare served on the National Science Board (NSB) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 1990 to 1996, and was the board's chair from 1994 to 1996. He is a member of the editorial advisory boards of other scientific publications, among them Chemistry World, Angewandte Chemie, Central European Journal of Chemistry, Journal of Separation Sciences and the Chinese Journal of Chromatography.

Zare served on the Physical Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize from 2014 to 2016. He is chairman of the board of directors at Annual Reviews, Inc., and serves on the board of directors of The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. He and his students have developed tools and techniques to examine chemical reactions at the molecular and nanoscale levels. They have explored a wide-ranging variety of problems in physical chemistry and chemical analysis including examination of heterogeneous structures in mineral samples, the contents of cells and subcellular compartments, and the chemical analysis of liquid samples. This opened up the potential for a wide variety of fluid applications, and detection methods for capillary electrophoresis. Zare and his coworkers have combined CCD imaging with LIF detection to detect amol and zeptamole amounts of FITC-labelled amino acids. Zare and his students have also developed cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) for quantitative diagnosis, and for high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) Zare is also involved in the development of desorption electrospray ionization (DESI) techniques, which are being used for mass spectrometric imaging of lipids, metabolites and proteins in tissue samples, including prostate cancer.

quote|"I'm right now very excited about mass spectrometry, still excited about lasers, all types of [analytical techniques], but to me, they're tools. They're not ends in themselves... With new tools and measurement techniques, you can make advances in all types of fundamental problems." Richard Zare He is one of the co-authors of a paper that appeared in Science in 1996, raising the possibility that a meteorite from Mars, ALH84001, contained traces of Martian life. Other researchers questioned this interpretation, suggesting that the sample might have been contaminated after its arrival on Earth. Considerable controversy resulted, which Zare felt disrupted his ongoing laboratory research. Zare has also worked with NASA on examinations of organic materials obtained from Comet 81P/Wild by the Stardust Spacecraft.

Publications Zare has published several books, including a widely used textbook on the topic of angular momentum in quantum systems that is considered a classic for its explanations of angular momentum algebra and the fundamentals of molecular spectroscopy.

Selected publications

Books

Awards, honors and fellowships

1974 – National Fresenius Award, Phi Lambda Upsilon 1976 – Member, National Academy of Sciences 1976 – Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1979 – inaugural recipient of the Michael Polanyi Medal, Royal Society of Chemistry 1981 – Earle K. Plyler Prize 1983 – Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh Award 1983 – National Medal of Science 1985 – Irving Langmuir Award in Chemical Physics 1986 – Michelson-Morley Award 1986 – John Gamble Kirkwood Award, ACS New Haven Section, "in recognition of his fundamental contributions in experimental and theoretical aspects of reaction dynamics." 1990 – Willard Gibbs Medal 1991 – Peter Debye Award 1991 – National Academy of Sciences Award in Chemical Sciences, "For his pioneering laser-based techniques, deep insights, and seminal contributions, which have influenced every facet of chemical reaction dynamics." 1991 – Member, American Philosophical Society 1993 – Dannie Heineman Prize 1996 – The Bing Fellowship teaching award 1997 – California Scientist of the Year Award 1998 – American Chemical Society Award in Analytical Chemistry 1999 – E. Bright Wilson Award in Spectroscopy 1999 – Welch Award in Chemistry 1999 – Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London 2000 – honorary doctorate, Faculty of Science and Technology, Uppsala University, Sweden 2000 – Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science 2000 – Nobel Laureate Signature Award for Graduate Education 2001 – Charles Lathrop Parsons Award 2001 – Faraday Lectureship Prize, Royal Society of Chemistry 2003 – Laurance and Naomi Carpenter Hoagland Prize 2005 – Nichols Medal, ACS (New York Section) 2005 – Wolf Prize in Chemistry 2005 – Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professorship 2009 – F.A. Cotton Medal for Excellence in Chemical Research of the American Chemical Society 2009 – BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Science (co-winner with Michael Fisher) 2010 – Priestley Medal 2011 – King Faisal International Prize 2012 – Recipient of the Reed M. Izatt and James J. Christensen Lectureship. 2017 – Othmer Gold Medal from the Chemical Heritage Foundation