John Stewart Waugh (April 25, 1929 – August 22, 2014) 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 ...

and

Institute Professor An institute is an organisational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes can ...

at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 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 ...

. He is known for developing average hamiltonian theory and using it to extend NMR spectroscopy, previously limited to liquids, to the solid state. He is the author of ANTIOPE, a

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...

general purpose

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

-based simulator of the spectra and dynamics of

nuclear magnetic resonance Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a physical phenomenon in which nuclei in a strong constant magnetic field are perturbed by a weak oscillating magnetic field (in the near field) and respond by producing an electromagnetic signal with a ...

(NMR). He has also used systems of a few coupled

spin Spin or spinning most often refers to: * Spinning (textiles), the creation of yarn or thread by twisting fibers together, traditionally by hand spinning * Spin, the rotation of an object around a central axis * Spin (propaganda), an intentionally b ...

s to illustrate the general requirements for equilibrium and

ergodicity In mathematics, ergodicity expresses the idea that a point of a moving system, either a dynamical system or a stochastic process, will eventually visit all parts of the space that the system moves in, in a uniform and random sense. This implies th ...

in isolated systems. In 1974 Waugh was elected as a member of the

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 ...

(NAS), in the Chemistry section. Waugh was awarded the

Wolf Prize in Chemistry The Wolf Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Mathematics, Medicine, Physics and Arts. Laure ...

for 1983/84 with Herbert S. Gutowsky and Harden M. McConnell for their independent work on

NMR spectroscopy Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, most commonly known as NMR spectroscopy or magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), is a spectroscopic technique to observe local magnetic fields around atomic nuclei. The sample is placed in a magnetic fiel ...

.Wolf Foundation Prize Committee for Chemistry (n.d.) Waugh was cited for his "fundamental theoretical and experimental contributions to high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy in solids." In 2011, Waugh received th
Welch Award in Chemistry
for revolutionizing NMR spectroscopy. In the words of Ernest H. Cockrell, chair of th
Welch Foundation
Waugh "discovered how to use NMR to study solids, creating a collection of tools that allows researchers to view the structures and properties of proteins, membranes, viruses, and many other critical components of life." His work continues to be used extensively in chemistry, physics, biology, materials science, and medicine. He died on August 22, 2014.

References

Sources

* *

External links

MIT faculty webpage
1929 births 2014 deaths People from Willimantic, Connecticut 20th-century American chemists Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Fellows of the American Physical Society Wolf Prize in Chemistry laureates Computational chemists {{US-academic-scientist-stub