Keep it in the family
Sorry for not having posted in a while, I'm sure you all missed me. (psh.) I've been on vacation. Actually I'm still on vacation, but I actually thought of something to write about. It's just a weird trend I've noticed. Most normal people have kids that want to have nothing to do with the professions of their parents. Of course, when you have children whose parents are very famous, well, maybe it's just hard not to follow in your parents' footsteps. The most famous example in science is perhaps Pierre and Marie Curie, whose daughter Ir won a Nobel in Chemistry for her work in the field her parents helped practically invent- radioactivity. But I can think of of several others in chemistry:
- Nobel laureate Arthur Kornberg's son, Roger, won the Nobel in Chemistry this year;
- Bob Grubbs' son, Barney, is a chemistry professor at Dartmouth;
- Robert Scheidt's (at Notre Dame, an inorganic chemist, does work on metalloporphyrins and nitric oxide) son, Karl, is an organic prof at Northwestern;
- Steven Zimmerman, the son of the great organic chemist Howard Zimmerman, is a professor at the University of Illinois;
- One of my chemical heroes, Barry Sharpless, has a son who's a grad student in chemistry, and will hopefully not inherit his father's philosophy on seminars.
21 comments:
H.C. and Charles Brown
K. Barry has a philosophy on seminars? I guess if you count "Say whatever occurs to you, even if it isn't related to the first part of the sentence". I swear, he gave the LEAST coherent seminar I have ever been to, and I even caught the reference to "How the Irish Saved Civilization".
My three-year-old asked me to teach him about chemicals last night. He swears he wants to be a musician and a conductor, though.
Yes, I believe "Say whatever occurs to you, even if it isn't related to the first part of the sentence" does, in fact, count as a philosophy. I never said it was a GOOD one, just... one.
Niels Bohr and his son, Aage Niels Bohr...both nuclear physicists, and both Nobel Prize winners...Although not stictly chemists...I still remember learning about the "Bohr radius" in high school (junior high?) chemistry.
An interesting topic--off the top of my head:
* Hisashi Yamamoto's daughter, Kana Yamamoto, is a chemist at Bristol Meyer Squibb.
* Steve Skoog, the son of Douglas A. Skoog, is (I think) a chemist at Rohm & Haas.
* Harry Gray's son Mike got a Ph.D. from UCSB (in Materials science?) and is teaching chemistry at Occidental College.
* John R. Stille (Eli Lilly?) is the son of the late John K. Stille.
I think Malcolm Chisholm has a chemist son and that Niels Damrauer (Colorado-Boulder) is the son of a chemist, but I am not entirely sure.
I'm sure there are more that I'm missing.
(Grubbs' other son Brendan got a masters in chemistry from Texas before switching to med school and his daughter Katy got through Bob Crabtree's chemistry class and switched to psychology.)
Hans Karl August Simon von Euler-Chelpin won the 1929 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his investigations on the fermentation of sugar and fermentative enzymes. His son Ulf Svante von Euler won the 1970 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology for his work on neurotransmitters.
The father and son team from the Bragg family shared the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics for their contribution to Crystal Structure Analysis.
I believe E.J. Corey's son, David, is a professor at UT Southwestern.
Some oldies
Victor Grignard - Roger Grignard
Emil Fischer - Hermann Otto Fischer
Wilhelm Schlenk - Wilhelm Schlenk Jr. and Fritz Schlenk
Ah, sweet. A little love for Karl and Bob Scheidt. Karl's a pretty damned good speaker, too, if I remember correctly. Classes with Bob are...comical, to be honest.
Nicholas Magnus, son of Phil, works in the Process Chem Dept at Eli-Lilly
John T. (or Jay) Groves at Princeton has a son Jay Groves at Berkeley.
Isn't Charlie Brown (Early work on KH as a reagent not the Peanuts character) H.C. Brown's son?
Just thought of adding to the list....
Prof. Lyle Castle ( Idaho state university) is son of Prof. Raymond Castle (Founder of The journal of Heterocyclic Chemistry)
Lyle Castle is carrying the legacy forward.
Best,
Shiva
Charley Perrin, a Phys-organic prof at UC San Diego, and his son, who is a prof. of chem up in Univ. of British Columbia
Edward Piers (Professor, University of British Columbia) has a son Warren Piers (Professor, University of Calgary)
George Barany's son (I believe his name is Michael) is in high school and published a paper with his dad. This was in something like C&E news a while back.
Since Bob Crabtree was mentioned... He gave a talk at my undergraduate institution, and came out bowling with the ACS student affiliate chapter. I had (perhaps) a tad too much beer, and ended up bowling a strike while laying on my stomach.
Bob guest lectured our inorganic class the next morning, and noted that he was duly impressed with my ability both to perform said feat and then also to subsequently make it to class by 8 AM the next day.
My dad and I are both in the same Pchem department - he as a research scientist, me as a grad student, thankfully for different profs.
My dad and I are chemists. He's a solid state inorganic professor, and I'm a grad student working for the guy who got his PhD from the same guy my dad did. Crazyness.
Christopher Ingold (UCL Chemistry) and Keith Ingold (NRC Ottawa Canada)
Hitoshi Nozaki and Kyoko Nozaki (and Kohei Tamao)
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