George K. Fraenkel (July 27, 1921 – June 10, 2009) was an American physical chemist, dean of Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and chairman of the chemistry department 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 ...

. Fraenkel was noted for his research of electron spin resonance. He also pioneered in the use of electronic techniques to study structures of molecules.

Biography

Background

Fraenkel was born on July 27, 1921, in

Deal, New Jersey Deal is a borough in Monmouth County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, settled by Europeans in the mid-1660s and named after an English carpenter from Deal, Kent. As of the 2020 United States census, the borough's population was 900, an increas ...

. He grew up in Scarsdale, New York.

Education

In 1942, he graduated magna cum laude and

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal a ...

from Harvard. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, he was hired by the National Defense Research Committee. After the war, he graduated Cornell with a doctorate in 1949.

Career

Fraenkel joined Columbia’s chemistry department in 1949. He served as the department's chair from 1965 to 1968. From 1968 to 1983, he served as dean of graduate school of arts and science. In 1971, Fraenkel oversaw the closure of the linguistics program at Columbia, under his recommendations. In 1983, he became a vice president for special projects. From 1986 to 1991, he returned to the chemistry department. He retired in 1991 as Higgins Professor Emeritus and dean emeritus.

Retirement

At the time of his death, he also served as director and treasurer of the Atran Foundation in New York City.

Private life and death

Fraenkel died in Manhattan on June 10, 2009, aged 87. Surviving him were his wife, Eva Stolz Gilleran Cantwell and six stepchildren.

Awards

In 1972, Fraenkel received the

Harold C. Urey Harold Clayton Urey ( ; April 29, 1893 – January 5, 1981) was an American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934 for the discovery of deuterium. He played a significant role in the d ...

Award of the Gamma Chapter of

Phi Lambda Upsilon Phi Lambda Upsilon National Honorary Chemical Society () was founded in 1899 at the Noyes Laboratory of the University of Illinois. Phi Lambda Upsilon was the first honor society dedicated to scholarship in a single discipline, chemistry. Object ...

. In 1981, he received the Title of Officer dans l’Ordre des Palmes Academiques (1981).

Contributions

Fraenkel developed instruments to "track the spin of electrons and thereby obtain information on very small structures," according to an obituary in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. "We are now determining the structure and function of medically important proteins implicated in

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...

, how viral proteins insert themselves into cells, medical imaging, memory function and

quantum computing Quantum computing is a type of computation whose operations can harness the phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, interference, and entanglement. Devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers. Though ...

," said Jack H. Freed, professor of physical chemistry at Cornell, in reference to developments based on Fraenkel's work.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fraenkel, George K 1921 births 2009 deaths People from Deal, New Jersey Harvard University alumni Cornell University alumni Columbia University faculty American physical chemists People from Scarsdale, New York Scientists from New York (state) Fellows of the American Physical Society