During the afternoon of October 24, 2019 the Chemistry Department will celebrate the 100th birthday (on December 9) of William Nunn Lipscomb, Jr., who is perhaps our most illustrious graduate. Lipscomb grew up in Lexington, graduated in 1941 from the University of Kentucky with a major in chemistry, and earned his Ph.D. from CalTech in 1946, where his mentor was Linus Pauling. After 13 years as a faculty member at the University of Minnesota Lipscomb was hired away in 1959 by Harvard University. In 1976 Lipscomb was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the structures and bonding of boranes, which are compounds composed of boron and hydrogen atoms. Later Lipscomb was equally well known for his pioneering studies of atomic-level structures of enzymes.
The celebration promises to be interesting and fun. There will be three speakers: Marjorie Wikler Senechal is a Lexington native who took piano lessons from Lipscomb’s sister and remained close to the family. She is Professor Emerita in Mathematics and History of Science and Technology at Smith College. The other two speakers earned their Ph.D. degrees at Harvard under Lipscomb’s direction. Thomas F. Koetzle, who spent his career at Brookhaven National Laboratory, will talk about Lipscomb’s studies of boron compounds. Douglas C. Rees, a Lexington native who is now a professor at CalTech, will discuss Lipscomb’s biochemical work. All three will include anecdotes about Lipscomb, who was known to all as The Colonel, who made a YouTube video about how to tie a string tie (which had become his trademark), and who regularly found ways to slip amusing bits into his scientific papers.
The celebration, which will take place from 1-5 PM at the W. T. Young Library Auditorium, will be open to the public. A detailed schedule will be posted later.
For information related to parking, please refer to the Transportation Services website at https://www.uky.edu/transportation/
Melanie S. Sanford is currently the Moses Gomberg Distingished University Professor of Chemistry and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Chemistry at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees at Yale University in 1996 where she carried out undergraduate research in the laboratory of Professor Robert Crabtree. She pursued graduate studies at the California Institute of Technology working with Professor Robert Grubbs. Following postdoctoral work at Princeton University with Professor John Groves, she joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in the summer of 2003 as an Assistant Professor of chemistry. She was promoted to associate professor in 2007, to full professor in 2010, to Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Chemistry in 2011, and to Moses Gomberg Collegiate Professor of Chemistry in 2012. She has won a number of awards, including the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry, the Sackler Prize, the Blavatnik Award, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the ACS. Research in the Sanford group aims to develop new chemical reactions that enable the production of pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and fuels in a more efficient and environmentally friendly manner. 
