Sunney Ignatius Chan (; born October 5, 1936) is an American-born biophysical chemist. His work primarily focused on the use of various magnetic resonance spectroscopic and other physical chemical techniques in the analysis of various biochemical and biological problems.

Early life and education

He was born on October 5, 1936, in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

to immigrant parents originally from Southern China. Chan received secondary education in Hong Kong, returning to the United States to attend the

University of San Francisco The University of San Francisco (USF) is a private Jesuit university in San Francisco, California. The university's main campus is located on a setting between the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate Park. The main campus is nicknamed "The Hil ...

. Shortly afterwards, he transferred to 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 ...

, where he earned a bachelor's and doctoral degree in chemistry. He completed his doctoral work under the supervision of physical chemist William Dulaney Gwinn and was awarded his PhD in 1961.

Career

After receiving his doctorate, Chan completed a one-year post-doctoral fellowship in the laboratory of the Nobel laurate physicist

Norman Ramsey Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. (August 27, 1915 – November 4, 2011) was an American physicist who was awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics, for the invention of the separated oscillatory field method, which had important applications in the const ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

and later returned to California to join the chemistry faculty at

University of California, Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on in a suburban distr ...

. He began teaching at the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

in 1963. Five years later, he was awarded a

Guggenheim fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

. Chan received several honors throughout his career at Caltech, among them fellowship into the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

(1987) and

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

(1992), as well as membership of

Academia Sinica Academia Sinica (AS, la, 1=Academia Sinica, 3=Chinese Academy; ), headquartered in Nangang, Taipei, is the national academy of Taiwan. Founded in Nanking, the academy supports research activities in a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from ...

(1988). He was appointed Caltech's first George Grant Hoag Professor of Biophysical Chemistry in 1992. Chan retired from Caltech in 1997, for a position as distinguished research fellow at

. Subsequently, Chan was named vice president of

under

Yuan T. Lee Yuan Tseh Lee (; born 19 November 1936) is a Taiwanese chemist and a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He was the first Taiwanese Nobel Prize laureate who, along with the Hungarian-Canadian John C. Polanyi and America ...

. Caltech granted emeritus status to Chan in 2002. Upon Chan's retirement as vice president of Academia Sinica in July 2003, Lee inaugurated the Sunney Chan Lecture in Chan's honor. He remained affiliated with Academia Sinica as a research and visiting fellow until 2015. In his later career, Chan has held distinguished chair and research professorships at

National Taiwan University National Taiwan University (NTU; ) is a public research university in Taipei, Taiwan. The university was founded in 1928 during Japanese rule as the seventh of the Imperial Universities. It was named Taihoku Imperial University and served d ...

and

National Chung Hsing University National Chung Hsing University (NCHU; ) is a research-led comprehensive university in South District, Taichung, Republic of China. Currently, NCHU is among the four universities of the Taiwan Comprehensive University System, a research-led un ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chan, Sunney Scientists from the San Francisco Bay Area 1936 births Living people Members of Academia Sinica Fellows of the American Physical Society University of California, Riverside faculty University of San Francisco alumni UC Berkeley College of Chemistry alumni Academic staff of the National Taiwan University Academic staff of the National Chung Hsing University Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science American people of Chinese descent TWAS fellows American expatriates in Hong Kong American expatriate academics American expatriates in Taiwan 20th-century American chemists 21st-century American chemists