by Alejandra Molina
Staff Writer
When 1992 Nobel Prize winning chemist Rudolph Marcus decided to study chemistry, he was a little skeptical; the idea of going for a second post-doctoral degree seemed radical.
But his decision to persevere ultimately led him to be a key contributor to the understanding of electron transfer reactions and win the Nobel Prize.
Marking the 11th anniversary of his award, Marcus will discuss his professional accomplishments at 4 p.m. Oct. 29 in La Fetra Lecture Hall.
“It’s a real honor to have him come here,” said Robert Neher, professor of biology. “It’s an inspiration to see people that have fully dedicated their lives to a particular area of study.”
Marcus received his bachelor of science in chemistry and a doctorate in physical chemistry from McGill University in Quebec.
While at McGill, Marcus also took numerous courses in mathematics.
In 1946 when Marcus received his Ph.D, he joined the new post-doctoral program at the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa.
His desire to apply his mathematical skills and to better understand the results of his experiments led him to pursue his second post-doctoral degree in theoretical chemistry in 1949.
Two years later, Marcus teamed up with Walter Trost, another post-doctoral researcher at the National Research Council. Marcus’ son, Kenneth Marcus, is an assistant professor of history at ULV.
Of his father’s work and career path, Kenneth Marcus said: “He had an experimental background and got tired of breaking test tubes.”
Eventually Rudolf Marcus took a faculty position at the Polytechnic University of New York, where he would begin life as a teacher and “independent researcher.”
“The combination of teaching and research at a university just appealed to him,” said Kenneth Marcus.
He experimented on gas phase and solution reaction rates and wrote an important series of papers in 1952, a case he was previously working on but the lack of experimental data discouraged him from continuing.
When a student in his statistical mechanics class began talking to him about a problem in polyelectrolytes, it sparked Marcus’ interest in electrostatics, and in 1960 he decided that it was time for another change.
Four years later, he joined the faculty of the University of Illinois. While working there, his interest in electron transfer continued and with an academic year in Europe in 1975, he was exposed to the problem of electron transfer in photosynthesis.
“He read an article by a professor and something didn’t seem right,” Kenneth Marcus said.
Once he detected there was a problem, Rudolf Marcus began working on it and discovered a simple mathematical theory to explain the electron transfer rates.
“It was a breakthrough moment,” Kenneth Marcus said. “Once the mathematics fell into place, he had something unique to offer.”
Today Marcus is the Arthur Ames Noyes professor of chemistry at Cal Tech and lives in Pasadena.
