Rudolph A. Marcus

Rudolph Marcus begins the interview with a discussion of his family background and early education. Though he spent some of his early years in Detroit, Michigan, he primarily grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Montreal, Canada. Marcus was encouraged to continue his education by his parents and his uncles. He enrolled in the twelfth grade, the equivalent of the first year of college, to save money for the university. Marcus then attended McGill University, majoring in chemistry. He graduated with a B.Sc. in 1943. Due to the war, he was able to take his fourth year in the course of a summer. Marcus went directly to graduate school, also at McGill, and studied physical chemistry with Carl Winkler. His research, RDX, was determined by war needs, and he received his Ph.D. in 1946. He spent an additional two and a half years on a National Research Council of Canada post-doc with Edward W. R. Steacie. In 1949, Marcus moved to the University of North Carolina, accepting a position with Oscar Rice, who had received an Office of Naval Research contract. It was there that Marcus began to focus on theory, particularly unimolecular and transition state theory. The result of this work was the development of the RRKM theory. In 1951, Marcus moved again, this time to Brooklyn Polytechnic University, where he became an assistant professor in the chemistry department. Marcus discusses his colleagues, including Herman Mark, Herbert Morawetz, and Charles Overberger, as well as the atmosphere of the institution. He became interested in electrostatics and polyelectrolytes. He also began some polymer research, and pursued work on electron transfer. In 1964, Marcus left Brooklyn Polytechnic for the University of Illinois. During his time there, he spent a few semesters at Oxford University as a visiting professor. In 1978, Marcus accepted a position at Caltech, where he began collaborating with Ahmed Zewail. His desire to pursue his research led him to decline administrative work. At Caltech, Marcus continued his electron transfer research. He concludes the interview with a discussion of his family, the challenges of research, and thoughts on his electron transfer work.

RDX Project

1944 - 1946 Research Staff Member

National Research Council of Canada

1946 - 1949 Junior Research Officer in Photochemistry

University of North Carolina

1949 - 1951 Postdoctoral Research Associate in Theoretical Chemistry

Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn

1951 - 1954 Assistant Professor of Physical Chemistry

Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn

1954 - 1958 Associate Professor of Physical Chemistry

Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn

1958 - 1964 Professor of Physical Chemistry

University of Illinois

1964 - 1978 Professor of Physical Chemistry

California Institute of Technology

1978 - Present Arthur Amos Noyes Professor of Chemistry

James J. Bohning

James J. Bohning is professor emeritus of chemistry at Wilkes University, where he was a faculty member from 1959 to 1990. He served there as chemistry department chair from 1970 to 1986 and environmental science department chair from 1987 to 1990. Bohning was chair of the American Chemical Society’s Division of the History of Chemistry in 1986; he received the division’s Outstanding Paper Award in 1989 and has presented more than forty papers at national meetings of the society. Bohning was on the advisory committee of the society’s National Historic Chemical Landmarks Program from its inception in 1992 through 2001 and is currently a consultant to the committee. He developed the oral history program of the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and he was the foundation’s director of oral history from 1990 to 1995. From 1995 to 1998, Bohning was a science writer for the News Service group of the American Chemical Society. He is currently a visiting research scientist and CESAR Fellow at Lehigh University. In May 2005, he received the Joseph Priestley Service Award from the Susquehanna Valley Section of the American Chemical Society.