Bruno Hasbrouck Zimm (October 31, 1920 – November 26, 2005) was an American
chemist
A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe th ...
. He was a
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...
of chemistry and
biochemistry
Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...
from
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...
, and a leading
polymer chemist and
DNA researcher.
Early life
Zimm was born an only child in 1920 in Woodstock, New York.
His father was the sculptor
Bruno Louis Zimm, and his mother a writer. Zimm graduated from
Kent School
Kent School is a private, co-educational, college preparatory boarding school in Kent, Connecticut, United States. Frederick Herbert Sill established the school in 1906. It is affiliated with the Episcopal Church of the United States.
Acade ...
in
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
,
Connecticut
Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...
in 1938. After obtaining his Ph.D. in physical chemistry under the tutelage of
Joe Mayer
Joseph Mayer (1846 – November 27, 1909) was an American businessman, gold prospector and pioneer who founded the town of Mayer, Arizona.
Early years
Mayer (birth name: Joseph Hoffmayer) was born in Olean, New York, to French immigrants. He di ...
at
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 ...
in 1944, he moved across town for postdoctoral work with
Herman Mark at the
Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn
The New York University Tandon School of Engineering (commonly referred to as Tandon) is the engineering and applied sciences school of New York University. Tandon is the second oldest private engineering and technology school in the United Sta ...
, where he began his research on light scattering.
Career
Research
In 1956, Zimm extended the
Rouse model
The Rouse model is frequently used in polymer physics.
The Rouse model describes the conformational dynamics of an ideal chain. In this model, the single chain diffusion is represented by Brownian motion of beads connected by harmonic springs. The ...
of
Polymer Physics Polymer physics is the field of physics that studies polymers, their fluctuations, mechanical properties, as well as the kinetics of reactions involving degradation and polymerisation of polymers and monomers respectively.P. Flory, ''Principles of ...
to include hydrodynamic interactions mediated by the solvent between different parts of the chain. Whilst the original Rouse model overestimates the decrease of the diffusion coefficient D with the number of polymer beads N as 1/N, the Zimm model predicts D~1/Nν which is consistent with the experimental data for dilute polymer solutions, and where ν is the Flory exponent, a measure of the polymer solubility.
In 1959, together with J.K. Bragg, Zimm wrote a classic paper on the helix-coil transition for polypeptides; a year later he published a second paper on the “melting” of the helical forms of DNA.
See also
*
Zimm–Bragg model In statistical mechanics, the Zimm–Bragg model is a helix-coil transition model that describes helix-coil transitions of macromolecules, usually polymer chains. Most models provide a reasonable approximation of the fractional helicity of a given ...
References
External links
Bruno Zimm PapersMSS 675
Special Collections & Archives UC San Diego Library.
1920 births
2005 deaths
20th-century American chemists
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
Kent School alumni
University of California, San Diego faculty
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Polymer scientists and engineers
Fellows of the American Physical Society
{{US-chemist-stub