Jiri Jonas (born April 1, 1932 in
Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...
,
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...
) is a professor emeritus of
chemistry in the Center for Advanced Study at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univ ...
.
Jiri Jonas is considered a pioneer in the use of magnetic resonance imaging at high pressure, developing techniques to study the dynamic structure of liquids and proteins.
This approach has been used in the study of the arc repressor, a DNA-binding protein containing 53 amino acid residues.
Education and career
Jiri Jonas was awarded his B. S. Degree at the
University of Prague in 1956. In 1960 he received his a PhD from the
Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences
The Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (Czech: ''Československá akademie věd'', Slovak: ''Česko-slovenská akadémia vied'') was established in 1953 to be the scientific center for Czechoslovakia. It was succeeded by the Czech Academy of Science ...
, where he worked with
Josef Pliva.
He won awards for scientific work from the academy in 1958, 1960 and 1964.
In 1966, Jonas joined became a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He became the second director of the
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
The Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology is a unit of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign dedicated to interdisciplinary research. A gift from scientist, businessman, and philanthropist Arnold O. Beckman (1900–2004) an ...
at the University of Illinois, and was instrumental in establishing it as an interdisciplinary center. He followed
Theodore L. Brown, serving from August 1993 until September 2001, when he was succeeded by
Pierre Wiltzius.
His colleagues included
Harry George Drickamer,
Herbert S. Gutowsky,
Rudolph A. Marcus, and others.
He married biochemist Ana Masiulis on June 1, 1968.
Research
Working in the areas of chemical physics and physical chemistry,
Jonas has been particularly interested in reaction kinetics and the behavior of liquids under extreme conditions such as high pressure and extreme heat. He is considered "a pioneer in the use of high-pressure nuclear magnetic resonance and Raman spectroscopy" which he has used to study liquids and their reactions under such conditions.
He has developed new experimental techniques involving 1 and 2 dimensional high-resolution and high-pressure nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to study proteins and protein folding.
[ Techniques include Raman] and Rayleigh laser scattering methods for spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and photo-chemically induced dynamic nuclear polarization (Photo-CIDNP).
Jonas has been a co-director of the NATO Advanced Study Institute on High Pressure Chemistry, Biochemistry and Materials Science. He has co-edited ''High pressure chemistry and biochemistry'' (1987), ''High Pressure Chemistry, Biochemistry and Materials Science'' (1993) and ''High pressure molecular science'' (1999).
Awards and honors
Jonas is a member of the American Physical Society (APS) (1982), the National Academy of Sciences (1985), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1987) and the American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
(2003). He was Chair of the Division of Chemical Physics of the APS for the 1985–1986 term.
Jonas received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972.
Jonas was the second recipient of the Joel Hildebrand Award in 1983. The award is given by the American Chemical Society "for distinguished contributions to the understanding of the chemistry and physics of liquids." In 1988 Jonas received an award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany, recognizing him as a Senior U.S. Scientist.
The Centro Nacional de Ressonância Magnética Nuclear Jiri Jonas (CNRMN, trans. National Center of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance of Macromolecules Jiri Jonas), founded at the University of Rio de Janeiro in 1997, is named in his honor. It has been directed by Jerson Lima Silva since 1998.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jonas, Jiri
American chemists
Living people
1932 births
Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Fellows of the American Chemical Society
Fellows of the American Physical Society
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Members of the American Philosophical Society