Veronica Vaida (born August 3, 1950) is a Romanian-American chemist and professor at the
University of Colorado Boulder
The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado syst ...
. She is an expert in
environmental chemistry
Environmental chemistry is the scientific study of the chemical and biochemical phenomena that occur in natural places. It should not be confused with green chemistry, which seeks to reduce potential pollution at its source. It can be defined as t ...
and aerosols.
Early life and education
Vaida was born in
Bucharest
Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...
.
Her parents were from
Transylvania
Transylvania ( ro, Ardeal or ; hu, Erdély; german: Siebenbürgen) is a historical and cultural region in Central Europe, encompassing central Romania. To the east and south its natural border is the Carpathian Mountains, and to the west the Ap ...
and met after
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 ...
.
Her mother survived an
Auschwitz concentration camp
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
and her father was a political prisoner.
She attended a Hungarian school in
Cluj-Napoca
; hu, kincses város)
, official_name=Cluj-Napoca
, native_name=
, image_skyline=
, subdivision_type1 = Counties of Romania, County
, subdivision_name1 = Cluj County
, subdivision_type2 = Subdivisions of Romania, Status
, subdivision_name2 ...
and moved back to
Bucharest
Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...
in 1963.
She studied chemistry at the
University of Bucharest
The University of Bucharest ( ro, Universitatea din București), commonly known after its abbreviation UB in Romania, is a public university founded in its current form on by a decree of Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza to convert the former Princel ...
.
After seeing a US position advertised in 1969, she moved to
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
, working on detectors for molecular beams.
She joined
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
for her postgraduate studies in 1973, but struggled to find an academic mentor because the male academics thought organic chemistry was "unsuitable for women".
Her original mentor was
Geraldine A. Kenney-Wallace, who left to set up the first ultrafast spectroscopy lab at the
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...
.
She eventually obtained her Ph.D. from
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
in 1977.
Career
In 1977 Vaida became a Xerox postdoctoral fellow at
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 ...
, working alongside
Dudley R. Herschbach
Dudley Robert Herschbach (born June 18, 1932) is an American chemist at Harvard University. He won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with Yuan T. Lee and John C. Polanyi "for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elemen ...
and Bill Reinhart on photoreaction dynamics. She collaborated with Kevin Peters and
Meredith Applebury Meredith is a Welsh Brittonic family name, and is also sometimes used as a girl's or boy's forename. The Welsh form is "Maredudd".
People
* Meredith (given name)
* Meredith (surname)
Places Australia
* Meredith, Victoria
United States
* Meredi ...
at
Bell Labs
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...
. She was made a member of the faculty at
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 ...
in 1978.
In 1980 she was appointed an
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow and a
Camille and Henry Dreyfus scholar in 1984.
Vaida developed jet cooled absorption spectrometry to analyse the lifetimes of reactive systems, where excited state dynamics were complicated because of diffuse absorption and limited fluorescence.
She worked on an
excimer laser
An excimer laser, sometimes more correctly called an exciplex laser, is a form of ultraviolet laser which is commonly used in the production of microelectronic devices, semiconductor based integrated circuits or "chips", eye surgery, and microm ...
that could allow her group to study transition metal complexes.
She moved to the
University of Colorado Boulder
The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado syst ...
, where she built her own spectroscopy lab. She identified the excited state of OCIO with
Susan Solomon
Susan Solomon (born January 19, 1956 in Chicago) is an American atmospheric chemist, working for most of her career at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In 2011, Solomon joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech ...
in 1989. After collaborating with
Susan Solomon
Susan Solomon (born January 19, 1956 in Chicago) is an American atmospheric chemist, working for most of her career at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In 2011, Solomon joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech ...
, Vaida recognised that her studies of model compounds could be useful in atmospheric chemistry. Her group went on to study atmospheric ozone, water clusters and polar ice. She divorced Kevin Peters in 1990.
In 1994 she was awarded an
Erskine
Erskine (, sco, Erskin, gd, Arasgain) is a town in the council area of Renfrewshire, and historic county of the same name, situated in the West Central Lowlands of Scotland. It lies on the southern bank of the River Clyde, providing the lo ...
fellowship at the
University of Canterbury
The University of Canterbury ( mi, Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha; postnominal abbreviation ''Cantuar.'' or ''Cant.'' for ''Cantuariensis'', the Latin name for Canterbury) is a public research university based in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was ...
in
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
.
She worked on the overtones of OH vibrations using a
cavity ring down spectrometer.
She went on to study organic fragments on aerosol particles. She hypothesised that aerosol coagulation and division permitted organics to form a surfactant layer on top of the aerosol and recognised that this was similar to single cell bacteria.
Her group began to study organic films at aerosol water-air interfaces, using surface reflection infrared spectroscopy to examine differences in phenylalanine ionisation in the bulk and at the water surface.
Vaida's Ph.D. student,
Elizabeth Griffith
Elizabeth Griffith (1727 – 5 January 1793) was an 18th-century Welsh-born dramatist, fiction writer, essayist and actress, who lived and worked in Ireland.
Biography
Elizabeth Griffith was born in Glamorgan, Wales, to Dublin theater manager ...
, found that peptide bonds at the surface of water would be generated nonenzymatically. In 2007 she was appointed distinguished lecturer at
Sigma Xi
Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society () is a highly prestigious, non-profit honor society for scientists and engineers. Sigma Xi was founded at Cornell University by a junior faculty member and a small group of graduate students in 1886 ...
Distinguished Lecturer
University of Colorado Boulder
The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado syst ...
.
She studied how sunlight can abiotically provide the prebiotic reactions essential for the evolution of life. In 2018 the ''
Journal of Physical Chemistry A
''The Journal of Physical Chemistry A'' is a scientific journal which reports research on the chemistry of molecules - including their dynamics, spectroscopy, kinetics, structure, bonding, and quantum chemistry. It is published weekly by the ...
'' published a tribute to Vaida and her research.
Awards and fellowships
*2004 – Fellow of the
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 ...
*2004 – Fellow of 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 ...
*2004 – Fellow of the
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University—also known as the Harvard Radcliffe Institute—is a part of Harvard University that fosters interdisciplinary research across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, arts, a ...
*2004 – Fellow of the
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died on April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been ...
*2011 –
American Chemical Society
The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all d ...
E. Bright Wilson Award
*2020 –
American Chemical Society
The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all d ...
Irving Langmuir Award in Chemical Physics
*2020 – 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 ...
Personal life
She married Kevin Peters, a colleague in the chemistry department at Harvard University in 1978. They divorced in 1990. In 1993 she met Adrian Tuck, a chemist at the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditio ...
Atmospheric Lab. They married in 1997.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vaida, Veronica
1950 births
Living people
21st-century American physicists
Yale University alumni
Harvard University faculty
University of Colorado faculty
University of Colorado Boulder faculty
Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Fellows of the American Physical Society
Scientists from Bucharest
Romanian women scientists
Romanian women chemists
American women chemists
Romanian emigrants to the United States
Brown University faculty
American women academics
21st-century American women scientists