Utente:Grasso Luigi/sanbox1/F C Whitmore

Frank Clifford Whitmore, noto anche con lo pseudonimo di Rocky (North Attleborough (Massachusetts), 01-10- 1887 – 24-06- 1947), è stato un chimico statunitense.

Withmore è stato un chimico eccellente che ha fornito notevoli evidenze sull'esistenza del meccanismo del carbocatione in chimica organica.

Educazione e carriera

Whitmore ha preso sia il grado di bachelor (1911) e quello di dottorato (1914) dalla Harvard University, mentre il suo consulente Ph.D. è stato Charles Loring Jackson. Alcuni contemporanei ad Harvard di Whitmore sono stati E.K. Bolton, Farrington Daniels, Roger Adams, James B. Sumner e James Bryant Conant. Dopo i suoi riconoscimenti ad Harvard diventa un professore e insegna alla University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, e alla Pennsylvania State University (PSU o Penn State).

A Penn State, Whitmore ha servito come Decano della Scuola di Chimica e Fisica nel periodo 1929–1947, succedendo al suo ex collega di Harvard Gerald Wendt. Chiamando come membri della facoltà scienziati notevoli, ad esempio Russell Marker e Merrell Fenske.

Vita privata

Nel 1914 he married Marion Gertrude Mason of Cambridge. He had met his wife-to-be during his summer as a university guide. She was a student of chemistry at Radcliffe and became a great help to him first in the laboratory and during later years in the writing of his books and papers. They were a very devoted couple throughout their married life, with five children, Frank, Jr., Mason, Harry, Marion, e Patricia Joan (deceduta).

Onori e riconoscimenti

La sua ricerca è stata ricompensata da molti premi conferiti dai suoi colleghi chimici.

• 1937 - He was awarded the William H. Nichols Medal by the New York section of the American Chemical Society. He was granted honorary Doctor of Science degrees by Franklin and Marshall College and by the University of Delaware.
• 1938 - Eletto Presidente della American Chemical Society and to honorary membership in the professional chemical fraternity, Phi Lambda Upsilon; granted honorary Doctor of Science degrees by Allegheny College
• 1943 - Eletto to the American Philosophical Society in 1943;
• 1945 - was awarded the Willard Gibbs Medal by the Chicago Section of the American Chemical Society.
• 1946 - He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Ricerca e pubblicazioni

While at the Pennsylvania State University Whitmore did his research on carbocations. The field of organic chemistry was struggling to explain how a compound with a double bonded carbon, an alkene, reacts with a halide compound. Whitmore worked on the findings of others and generalized the concept of molecules with a positively charged carbon atom, a carbocation, as an intermediate step in the addition of a halogen element.

Whitmore would go on to publish his findings in a paper titled "The Common Basis of Intramolecular Rearrangements." They were controversial at the time because many chemists, notably well known chemist Roger Adams, a critic of Whitmore's, believed that a molecule like a carbocation would never be stable enough to exist. Nevertheless, Whitmore published these findings which today are accepted as the most logical explanation for the reactions in question.

In 1937, Whitmore published Organic Chemistry, the first advanced organic chemistry textbook to be written in English. Whitmore worked on a revision of the book for several years, though the work was interrupted by World War II. The second edition of Organic Chemistry was published posthumously in 1951.

Bibliografia

• Yarmey, Kristen. Labors and Legacies: The Chemists of Penn State, 1855-1947. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Department of Chemistry, 2005.
• C. S. Marvel. Biographical memoir: Frank Clifford Whitmore. National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C., 1954. [Full text, including a photograph]
• M. R. Fenske. "Obituary notice: Frank Clifford Whitmore. Studies in the Detoxication of Catalyst Poisom. Part VI. p. 1090-1. Full text

Altri progetti

[[Categoria:Chimici Americani]] [[Categoria:Nati 1887]] [[Categoria:Morti 1947]] [[Categoria:Facoltà Pennsylvania State University]] [[Categoria:Alunni Harvard University]]