Henry Eyring "Chemist" SIGNED & Dated
May 22, 1980
National Academy of Sciences
of the United States of America,
Biographical Memoirs,
Vol. 51
Washington, D.C. 1980
Hardcover, 418 pages, 6” x 9”
PREFACE
ABRAHAM ADRIAN ALBERT
BY IRVING KAPLANSKY
LEONARD CARMICHAEL
BY CARL PFAFFMANN
LEMUEL ROSCOE CLEVELAND
BY WILLIAM TRAGER
LESTER REYNOLD DRAGSTEDT
BY OWEN H. WANGENSTEEN AND SARAH D. WANGENSTEEN
ALBERT EINSTEIN
BY JOHN ARCHIBALD WHEELER
WILLIAM MAURICE EWING
BY EDWARD C. BULLARD
ALFRED IRVING HALLOWELL
BY ANTHONY F. C. WALLACE
HERBERT SPENCER HARNED
BY JULIAN M. STURTEVANT
WALTER ABRAHAM JACOBS
BY ROBERT C. ELDERFIELD
ROBERT KHO-SENG LIM
BY HORACE W. DAVENPORT
ALFRED LEE LOOMIS
BY LUIS W. ALVAREZ
HOWARD PERCY ROBERTSON
BY JESSE L. GREENSTEIN
ERNEST HARRY VESTINE
BY SCOTT E. FORBUSH
WILLIAM BARRY WOOD, JR.
BY JAMES G. HIRSCH
Henry Eyring (chemist)
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 developed the Absolute Rate Theory or Transition state theory of chemical reactions, connecting the fields of chemistry and physics through atomic theory, quantum theory, and statistical mechanics.
Henry Eyring
Henry Eyring in 1951
Born February 20, 1901
Colonia Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico
Died December 26, 1981 (aged 80)
Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
Nationality American
Alma mater University of Arizona
University of California, Berkeley
Known for Transition state theory
Spouse(s)
Mildred Bennion; Winifred Brennan
Children
3, including Henry B. Eyring
Awards
Wolf Prize in Chemistry (1980)
Priestley Medal (1975)
Elliott Cresson Medal (1969)
Irving Langmuir Award (1968)
National Medal of Science (1966)
Peter Debye Award (1964)
William H. Nichols Medal (1951)
Newcomb Cleveland Prize (1932)
Scientific career
Fields
Chemistry
Institutions
Princeton University
University of Utah
Doctoral students
Keith J. Laidler
J O Hirschfelder
Walter Kauzmann
John Calvin Giddings
Other notable students
John L. Magee
History
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, Edward Christian Eyring, practiced plural marriage; Edward married Caroline Romney (1893) and her sister Emma Romney (1903), both daughters of Miles Park Romney, the great-grandfather of Mitt Romney.
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 sister Camilla's husband, Spencer W. Kimball, later president of the LDS Church.
Eyring earned a BS in mining engineering at the University of Arizona by working in a copper mine. He then received a fellowship from the US Bureau of Mines fellowship and earned his M.Sc. in metallurgy. Having seen the high rates of accidents in the mines, and breathed sulfur fumes from blast furnaces at a smelter, he chose to do his Ph.D. in chemistry. He pursued and received his doctoral degree in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1927 for a thesis on A Comparison of the Ionization by, and Stopping Power for, Alpha Particles of Elements and Compounds.
Princeton University recruited Eyring as an instructor in 1931. He would continue his work at Princeton until 1946. In 1946 he was offered a position as dean of the graduate school at the University of Utah, with professorships in chemistry and metallurgy. The chemistry building on the University of Utah campus is now named in his honor.
A prolific writer, Eyring 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 the Absolute Rate Theory, 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.
Awards
AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize (1932)
Bingham Medal (1949) of the Society of Rheology
Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry (1964)
National Medal of Science (1966)
Irving Langmuir Award (1967)
Linus Pauling Award (1969)
Elliott Cresson Medal (1969) from the Franklin Institute
Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement (1974)[15]
T. W. Richards Medal (1975)
Priestley Medal (1975)
Berzelius Medal (1979)
Wolf Prize (1980)
Member of International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science
Member of U.S. National Academy of Sciences
Member of the American Philosophical Society
Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Scientific publications: books
Henry Eyring authored, co-authored, or edited the following books or journals:
A generalized theory of plasticity involving the virial theorem
The activated complex in chemisorption and catalysis
An examination into the origin, possible synthesis, and physical properties of diamonds
Annual Review of Physical Chemistry
Basic chemical kinetics
Deformation Kinetics with Alexander Stephen Krausz
Electrochemistry
Kinetic evidence of phase structure
Modern Chemical Kinetics
Non-classical reaction kinetics
Physical Chemistry, an Advanced Treatise (1970)
Quantum Chemistry
Reactions in condensed phases
The significance of isotopic reactions in rate theory
Significant Liquid Structures
Some aspects of catalytic hydrogenation
Statistical Mechanics
Statistical Mechanics and Dynamics
Theoretical Chemistry: Advances and Perspectives. Volume 2
The Theory of Rate Processes in Biology and Medicine with Frank H. Johnson and Betsy Jones Stover
Theory of Optical Activity (Monographs on Chemistry series) with D.J. Caldwell
Time and Change
Valency