Andrew Streitwieser was an American chemist known for his contributions to

physical organic chemistry Physical organic chemistry, a term coined by Louis Hammett in 1940, refers to a discipline of organic chemistry that focuses on the relationship between chemical structures and reactivity, in particular, applying experimental tools of physical ch ...

. Streitwieser was born in 1927 in

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from South ...

and he grew up in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. He attended Columbia College and then

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

where he earned a PhD in the research group of

William von Eggers Doering William von Eggers Doering (June 22, 1917 – January 3, 2011) was the Mallinckrodt Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University. Before Harvard, he taught at Columbia (1942–1952) and Yale (1952–1968). Doering was born in Fort Worth, Texa ...

in 1952.Michigan State University. Department of Chemistry. Portraits. Andrew Streitwieser, Jr.
retrieved Aug. 11, 2018. He then was a

postdoctoral fellow A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to p ...

in the laboratory of

John D. Roberts John Dombrowski Roberts (June 8, 1918 – October 29, 2016) was an American chemist. He made contributions to the integration of physical chemistry, spectroscopy, and organic chemistry for the understanding of chemical reaction rates. Ano ...

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

. He has been Professor of Chemistry at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

since 1953. Streitwieser was one of the pioneers of

molecular orbital theory In chemistry, molecular orbital theory (MO theory or MOT) is a method for describing the electronic structure of molecules using quantum mechanics. It was proposed early in the 20th century. In molecular orbital theory, electrons in a molecule ...

and his book ''Molecular Orbital Theory for Organic Chemists'' had a lasting impact on the field. He is also well-known for proposing the currently accepted interpretation of the origin of secondary deuterium

kinetic isotope effect In physical organic chemistry, a kinetic isotope effect (KIE) is the change in the reaction rate of a chemical reaction when one of the atoms in the reactants is replaced by one of its isotopes. Formally, it is the ratio of rate constants for th ...

s. Streitwieser developed the technique of using protium/deuterium exchange to measure the acidity of exceedingly weak carbon acids and was a codeveloper of the MSAD acidity scale, named for the first initials of the chemists who developed it. His ''Chemical Reviews'' article titled "Solvolytic Displacement Reactions at Saturated Carbon" was influential in the field of physical organic chemistry. Streitwieser is also the author of the widely used university textbook ''Introduction to Organic Chemistry'' (4th revised ed., 1998, with Heathcock and Kosower, , German translation, ''Organische Chemie'', ), as well as the autobiography ''A Lifetime of Synergy With Theory and Experiment'' (). Streitwieser was elected to the

United States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

in 1969 and was an

American Chemical Society The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all d ...

Fellow. He is the recipient of the ACS Award in Petroleum Chemistry (1967), James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry (1982), the

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

(1968), the

Arthur C. Cope Arthur C. Cope (June 27, 1909 – June 4, 1966) was an American organic chemist and member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. He is credited with the development of several important chemical reactions which bear his name includin ...

Scholar Award (1989), and the Roger Adams Award (2009).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Streitwieser, Andrew 1927 births 2022 deaths 21st-century American chemists University of California, Berkeley faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Columbia College (New York) alumni People from Buffalo, New York