Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • Videos
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Library
    • Research
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
STEM
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • Videos
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Library
    • Research
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
STEM

SU chemist to receive prestigious award from American Chemical Society

Monday, November 2, 2009, By News Staff
Share
College of Arts and Sciences

One of John Baldwin’s most prized trophies is a small, yellowed postcard that is taped to the file cabinet in his office in Syracuse University’s Center for Science and Technology. The postcard was sent by world-renowned chemist William von Eggers Doering, now a professor emeritus at Harvard University.

In barely decipherable, faded ink are the words: “What a beautifully conceived piece of research” and a request for a reprint of a paper Baldwin published in the Journal of Physical Organic Chemistry in 1983. The paper resolved a fundamental problem in a field that had been unsettled for decades.

It’s the kind of research for which Baldwin is noted and that led to his selection as the 2010 recipient of the James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry. The acclaimed award acknowledging his significant achievements in research will be presented in March during the 239th ACS national meeting in San Francisco.

Baldwin is a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and the William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor of Science in SU’s College of Arts and Sciences.

“John is well-known for his study of cyclopropanes, a ring of three carbon atoms that has very unusual properties of chemical bonding,” says SU Graduate School Dean Ben Ware. Ware was chair of the chemistry department when Baldwin was recruited to SU in 1984.

“In addition to his outstanding research and teaching, John has the perspective of a person with national stature who knows how world-class chemists and departments operate,” Ware says. “In his gentle and collegial manner, John continues to be an intellectual leader on campus and around the world. The impact of his career on our chemistry department will continue for decades.”

Past recipients of the James Flack Norris Award include some of the most respected scientists in the field, such as Doering, who received the award in 1989. Baldwin says news of his selection came as a “humbling surprise.”

After earning a B.A. degree at Dartmouth College in 1959, Baldwin began Ph.D. studies in chemistry and physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) under the tutelage of John D. Roberts, the 1979 recipient of the James Flack Norris Award. Baldwin completed his Ph.D. in just three years and, at the tender age of 24, accepted a faculty position at the University of Illinois, Urbana.

In 1967, Baldwin was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, which allowed him to spend six months in Heidelberg, Germany, reading, thinking and reconsidering the generally accepted descriptive accounts of organic chemistry at that time.

“I didn’t write manuscripts and submit research papers to journals while in Germany, which would have been the standard practice,” Baldwin says. “I simply wanted to study, reflect and think about issues at the forefront of current developments in chemistry.”

His time in Germany marked a transition in the direction Baldwin’s research would ultimately take—to expand and strengthen basic understandings of the most fundamental questions in physical organic chemistry from which new theoretical perceptions could be tested and better theoretical models could be built.

“While in Germany, I discovered enticing opportunities to exercise one’s curiosity and technical skills to strive to gain better-grounded judgments of how chemical transformations take place,” Baldwin says.

Few laboratories in the world have undertaken the complex experiments Baldwin has designed and realized over the years. His work has provided scientists with experimental evidence that either confirmed or led to new theoretical models about how “simple” chemical reactions occur. The National Science Foundation has continuously supported Baldwin’s research over the 25 years he has been at SU.

“The NSF funding allowed me to follow my basic research priorities for all of these years,” Baldwin says, “for which I am extremely fortunate and thankful. The significant advances made in the field over the past 25 years have enabled us to think up, and then realize, experiments we couldn’t have dreamed of executing just five years ago.”

In addition to his tenure at the University of Illinois (1962-68), Baldwin spent 16 years at the University of Oregon (1968-84), including five years as dean of the University of Oregon’s College of Arts and Sciences.

His additional honors and awards include a Daniel Webster National Fellowship, the Charles Lathrop Parsons Scholar Fellowship, NSF Pre-doctoral Fellowships, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and a Senior U.S. Scientist Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which supported a research leave in 1974-75 in Hamburg and Munich, Germany. He has also held visiting professorships in Stockholm and Göteborg, Sweden, and elsewhere.

Baldwin has served on a number of national boards and scientific advisory committees, including the President’s Science Advisory Committee; the Medicinal Chemistry Study Section of the National Institutes of Health; the National Science Foundation’s Chemistry Division Standing Review Panel; the executive committee of the American Chemical Society Division of Organic Chemistry; and, currently, the Advisory Board of the Petroleum Research Fund of the American Chemical Society.

  • Author

News Staff

  • Recent
  • Eugene ‘Gene’ Anderson to Depart Syracuse, Tapped to Lead University of Pittsburgh’s Business School
    Thursday, May 26, 2022, By News Staff
  • Newhouse Creative Advertising Students Win 195 Awards in 1 Year, Setting a New School Record
    Thursday, May 26, 2022, By News Staff
  • “Syracuse University to rename the Carrier Dome – what name would fans choose?”
    Wednesday, May 25, 2022, By Lily Datz
  • Digital Badges at Syracuse University: Recognizing and Authenticating Microcredential Moments in Higher Education
    Wednesday, May 25, 2022, By Lyndy McLaughlin
  • Social Work Student Bre’Yona Montalvo Receives First Sunflower Scholarship
    Wednesday, May 25, 2022, By Matt Michael

More In STEM

Matt Cufari Named as a 2022-23 Astronaut Scholar

Matt Cufari, a senior physics major in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), a computer science major in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, a Coronat Scholar and a member of the Renée Crown University Honors Program, has…

Dean Rajiv ‘Raj’ Dewan to Step Down as Dean of the School of Information Studies

Rajiv “Raj” Dewan, dean of the School of Information Studies, has announced he will conclude his deanship on June 30, 2022. Dewan plans to return to full-time faculty duties while continuing his research. David Seaman, dean of Syracuse University Libraries…

Biology and Earth and Environmental Sciences Departments Come Together on Diversity and Engagement Initiatives

In 1948, Professor James Hope Birnie became Syracuse University’s first African American faculty member in biology, teaching here until 1951. He was also one of its first biology faculty members to be supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)….

Black Hole Image Shows Einstein Was Right, Once Again

Today a team of astronomers announced they successfully captured the first direct image of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Duncan Brown is the Charles Brightman Endowed Professor of Physics at Syracuse University’s College of…

Biomedical and Chemical Engineering Professor’s Research Team Receives Multiple Awards at Society for Biomaterials Conference

Biomedical and chemical engineering Professor Mary Beth Monroe attended the Society for Biomaterials (SFB) 2022 meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, with Ph.D. students Anand Vakil, Henry Beaman, Changling Du and Maryam Ramezani, master’s student Natalie Petryk ’21, G’22 and undergraduate students Caitlyn…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • @SUCampus
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2022 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.