Bruce Herbert Mahan (August 17, 1930 – October 12, 1982) was an American

physical chemist Physical chemistry is the study of macroscopic and microscopic phenomena in chemical systems in terms of the principles, practices, and concepts of physics such as motion, energy, force, time, thermodynamics, quantum chemistry, statistical mech ...

and 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 ...

known for his work in the fundamentals of

chemical reaction A chemical reaction is a process that leads to the IUPAC nomenclature for organic transformations, chemical transformation of one set of chemical substances to another. Classically, chemical reactions encompass changes that only involve the pos ...

s and devotion to

chemistry education Chemistry education (or chemical education) is the study of teaching and learning chemistry. It is one subset of STEM education or discipline-based education research (DBER). Topics in chemistry education include understanding how students lea ...

. He was the doctoral advisor of Nobel laureate Yuan T. Lee.

Early life

Bruce Mahan was born August 17, 1930, and was the son of Arthur E. Mahan and Clara Blanche Gray Mahan and grew up in New Britain, Connecticut. He was the youngest of three children.

Harvard

He entered

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...

in 1948 on a fellowship and graduated with an A.B. degree in chemistry in 1952 as one of the top students. He continued with his doctoral work at Harvard working with the physical chemist

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on the photolysis of methyl ketene. He received his Ph.D. in 1956.

Berkeley

Mahan was hired as an instructor in the Department of Chemistry at the

University of California at 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 uni ...

in 1956 and he remained there throughout his career. In 1959 he was an assistant professor and became department chair in 1968. Mahan's research was in the area of gas phase kinetics and photolysis, particularly gas-phase ion chemistry and

energy transfer In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of heat ...

. Yuan T. Lee received his Ph.D. degree in 1965 under his direction and went on to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1986. He was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 1975 and died October 12, 1982, at the age of 52.

Textbooks

Mahan published ''Elementary Chemical Thermodynamics'' in 1963 and ''University Chemistry'' in 1965. The latter was described by

Ignacio Tinoco Ignacio is a male Spanish language, Spanish and Galician Language, Galician name originating either from the Roman family name Egnatius (disambiguation), Egnatius, meaning born from the fire, of Etruscan origin, or from the Latin name "Ignatius" ...

as "the model for all high-level freshman texts used today."

Awards and honors

He was an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow 1963-1965 and received the gold medal California Section Award of the American Chemical Society in 1968; he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1976. The Bruce H. Mahan Chair in Physical Chemistry was established in 2005 and was held by David Chandler until his death. The Bruce H. Mahan Teaching Award is given to outstanding graduate student chemistry instructors at University of California, Berkeley.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mahan, Bruce H. 1930 births 1982 deaths American physical chemists Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences University of California, Berkeley faculty Harvard College alumni Fellows of the American Physical Society 20th-century American chemists