William Gould Young

William Gould Young (July 30, 1902 – July 5, 1980) was an American physical organic chemist and professor at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He served as vice chancellor at UCLA for 13 years, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. The chemistry building at UCLA bears his name. He also collaborated with student groups to develop glassware and lab tools, for instance the ubiquitous glass helices found in fractionation columns used to separate isomeric volatiles.

Perhaps Young's longest legacy – apart from his 130 research publications – was serving as the doctoral advisor to chemist and nuclear magnetic resonance pioneer John D. Roberts.

Pedagogy Young was revered as a master educator and mentor. He devoted his entire Priestley Medal address to issues of chemical education, given increasing pressures from post-World War II research enterprise expansion, increased student enrollment in the sciences, and the rapid adoption of newer analytical instrumentation – NMR, mass spectrometry, HPLC, infrared spectroscopy, among others – into undergraduate curricula. He pointed out the inherent paradox in his "crossroads" analogy: as technology enabled deeper study of quantitative chemical data, it also called for reducing hours spent in chemistry so candidates could broaden their study into related fields such as botany, zoology, or molecular biology. 1964 – UCLA Distinguished Service Medal 1961 – Tolman Medal, Southern California section of the ACS 1951 – First faculty member at UCLA elected to the National Academy of Sciences 1949 – Chair of the Division of Organic Chemistry, ACS

According to the memorial written to Young by his colleagues on the UCLA Chemistry oral history, he received honorary degrees [ LLD or DS] from Colorado College, University of Colorado Boulder, University of the Pacific (United States), and UCLA.