Chairman's introduction, James Norris | Faculty Research Summaries

When the University of Chicago was founded in 1891, one of the first departments to be created was the Department of Chemistry, and, from the beginning, the department has shared the University's goal of excellence in its primary functions of research and undergraduate teaching.

Our current faculty numbers about 23, with special strength in inorganic, organic, and physical chemistry. Cosmochemistry and biochemistry are also well represented. There are some five joint appointments with this department. Approximately 130 graduate students and 50 postdoctoral research associates are now in residence.

Around 20 persons receive their doctorate degrees each year. The undergraduate program is also very strong. About 40% of all the students in the undergraduate college take at least one year of chemistry and presently about 50 bachelor's degrees are awarded by the Chemistry Department each year - an impressive figure. Very strong interdisciplinary programs are available for interested students. A particularly popular but demanding one is that between chemistry and molecular biology. Similar interdisciplinary opportunities exist in the graduate programs, for example, between chemistry and the Graduate School of Business.

The faculty and the research laboratories of the department are housed in the Kent Chemical Laboratory, the George Herbert Jones Laboratory, the G. D. Searle Chemistry Building, the James Franck Institute, and the Enrico Fermi Institute. These buildings are superbly equipped for teaching and research. Renovation of a complete floor of Jones for organic and polymer chemistry has been completed. Kent Hall, which was the first chemistry building at the University, was renovated in 1985. It is now among the most modern undergraduate teaching buildings in the world. The department has one of the most outstanding analytical instrument facilities in the country. The NMR Facility houses two 500 MHz and two 400 MHz NMR spectrometers for solution samples and a wide-bore 300 MHz instrument with CP-MAS capability for solid samples. The X-ray Diffraction Laboratory houses a state-of-the-art diffractometer with CCD detection for single crystal samples. The Mass Spectrometry Center features MALDI, electrospray (LC-MS) and GS-MS instruments for a wide range of chemical, polymer and biological samples. FT-IR, uv-vis, high temperature GPC, DSC and other analytical instruments are available in the department. The central machine shop for the fabrication of complex research instrumentation and a fine laboratory for the preparation of subsamples for materials research are located conveniently in the Research Institutes.

Although research in the department is obviously determined by the interests of the individual faculty members, an area which has recently received a strong local stimulus is that of materials chemistry, which ranges from the synthesis and characterization of photorefractive polymers to studies on thin films and quantum dots. Chemists of this type are playing a larger role in the MRSEC (Materials Research Science and Engineering Center). Work at the chemistry-biochemistry interface has been strengthened by new joint faculty appointments between Chemistry and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Research in the Department has been supported primarily by grants from government agencies, private foundations, and, to some extent, industrial corporations. We expect that the environment provided by the Department of Chemistry for research and graduate education will continue to be superb, and that exciting science will continue.

James Norris, Chairman

Faculty Research Summaries