Henry
Eyring (February 20,
1901 – December 26, 1981) was a Mexico-born United States theoretical chemist whose primary contribution was in the study
of chemical reaction rates and intermediates. Eyring, a
third-generation member of The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), was
reared on a cattle ranch in Colonia Juárez, Chihuahua,
a Mormon colony, for the
first 11 years of his life. His father practiced plural marriage; he was
married to two daughters of Miles Park Romney, the great-grandfather of Mitt Romney. Eyring's father treated both wives with equal
respect and care and made sure to provide the children with a healthy family
environment.[1] In July 1912, the Eyrings and about 4,200 other
immigrants were driven out of Mexico by violent insurgents during the Mexican
Revolution and moved to El Paso, Texas. After living in El Paso for approximately one
year, the Eyrings relocated to Pima, Arizona, where he completed high school and
showed a special aptitude for mathematics and science. He also studied at Gila Academy in Thatcher, Arizona, now Eastern Arizona College.
One of the pillars at the front of the main building still bears his name,
along with that of his brother-in-law, Spencer W. Kimball,
later president of
the LDS Church. By 1919, Eyring had received a state fellowship to the University of Arizona,
where he received degrees in mining engineering, metallurgy, and chemistry. He subsequently pursued and received his doctoral
degree in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1927 for a thesis
entitled: A Comparison of the Ionization by, and Stopping Power for,
Alpha Particles of Elements and Compounds. After a review of his
dissertation, Princeton University recruited
Eyring as an instructor in 1931. He would continue his work at Princeton until
1946[2] when he was offered a position as dean of the graduate school at the University of Utah. The
chemistry building on the University of Utah campus is now named in his honor. A
prolific writer, he authored more than 600 scientific articles, ten scientific
books, and a few books on the subject of science and religion. He received
the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in
1980 and the National Medal of Science in
1966 for developing the Absolute Rate Theory or Transition state theory of
chemical reactions, one of the most important developments of 20th-century
chemistry. Several other chemists later received the Nobel Prize for work based on it, and his failure to
receive the Nobel was a matter of surprise to many. The Nobel Prize
organization admitted that "Strangely, Eyring never received a Nobel
Prize"; the Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences apparently did not understand Eyring's theory until it
was too late to award him the Nobel. The academy awarded him the Berzelius
Medal in 1977 as partial compensation[ ]Sterling M. McMurrin believed
Eyring should have received the Nobel Prize but was not awarded it because of
his religion. Eyring
was elected president of the American Chemical Society in
1963 and the Association for the Advancement of Science in 1965.