Frank Albert Cotton (April 9, 1930 – February 20, 2007) was the W. Events 193 - Septimius Severus is proclaimed Roman Emperor by the army in Illyricum (in the Balkans) Year 1930 ( MCMXXX) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link will display 1930 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Events 1472 - Orkney and Shetland are left by Norway to Scotland, due to a Dowry payment Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. T. Doherty-Welch Foundation Chair and Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Texas A&M University. Texas A&M University, often called A&M or TAMU, is a Coeducational public Research University located in College Station He authored over 1700 scientific articles. ^[1] Cotton was recognized for his research on the chemistry of the transition metals. In Chemistry, the term transition metal (sometimes also called a transition element) has two possible meanings It commonly refers to any element in

Contents 1 Education 2 Independent career 3 Pedagogical influence 4 Recognition 5 Run for ACS presidency 6 Death 7 External links 8 References

Education

Frank Albert Cotton was born on April 9, 1930 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Events 193 - Septimius Severus is proclaimed Roman Emperor by the army in Illyricum (in the Balkans) Year 1930 ( MCMXXX) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link will display 1930 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Philadelphia (ˌfɪləˈdɛlfiə He attended local public schools before Drexel University and then Temple University. Drexel University is a private Coeducational University located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Temple University is a state-related public research University in Philadelphia. ^[2] After earning his BA degree from Temple in 1951, Cotton pursued a Ph. D. thesis under the guidance of Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson at Harvard where he worked on metallocenes. Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson ( 14 July 1921 &ndash 26 September, 1996) was an English Chemist. A metallocene is a compound with the general formula (C5R52M consisting of two cyclopentadienyl anions (Cp bound to a metal center in the oxidation ^[3] He received his Ph.D in 1955. "PhD" redirects here for other uses see PhD (disambiguation.

Independent career

Following his graduation from Harvard, Cotton began teaching at MIT. In 1961, at thirty-one years of age, he became the youngest person to have received a full professorship at MIT. ^[2] His worked emphasized both electronic structure and chemical synthesis. He pioneered the study of multiple bonding between transition metal atoms, starting with research on rhenium halides,^[4] and in 1964 identified the quadruple bond in the Re₂Cl₈^2- ion. Rhenium (ˈriːniəm is a Chemical element with the symbol Re and Atomic number 75 A quadruple bond is a type of Chemical bond between two Atoms involving 8 Electrons This bond is an extension of the more familiar types Double bonds His work soon focused on other metal-metal bonded species,^[5] elucidating the structure of chromium(II) acetate.

He was an early proponent of single crystal X-ray diffraction as a tool for elucidating the extensive chemistry of metal complexes. X-ray scattering techniques are a family of non-destructive analytical techniques which reveal information about the crystallographic structure chemical composition Through his studies on clusters, he demonstrated that many exhibited "fluxionality", whereby ligands interchange coordination sites on spectroscopically observable time-scales. He coined the term "hapticity" and the nomenclature that derives from it. The term hapticity is used to describe how a group of contiguous atoms of a ligand are coordinated to a central atom

In 1972 Cotton moved to Texas A&M University as the Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry. The following year he was named the Doherty-Welch Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. He also served as the director of the university's Laboratory for Molecular Structure and Bonding. ^[2][6]

Pedagogical influence

In addition to his research, Cotton taught inorganic chemistry. Inorganic chemistry is the branch of Chemistry concerned with the properties and behavior of Inorganic compounds This field covers all Chemical compounds He authored Chemical Applications of Group Theory. ^[7] This text introduced generations of chemists to the group theoretical analysis of bonding and spectroscopy. A chemical bond is the physical process responsible for the attractive interactions between Atoms and Molecules and which confers stability to diatomic and polyatomic Spectroscopy was originally the study of the interaction between Radiation and Matter as a function of Wavelength (λ

Among college students, Cotton is perhaps best known as the coauthor of the textbook Advanced Inorganic Chemistry, now in its sixth English edition. Coauthored with his thesis advisor, Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson, the textbook is colloquially known as "Cotton and Wilkinson. " The text surveys coordination chemistry, cluster chemistry, homogeneous catalysis, and organometallic chemistry. ^[2][8]

Cotton served on various editorial boards of scientific journals, including those of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Inorganic Chemistry, and Organometallics. The Journal of the American Chemical Society (usually abbreviated as J He chaired the Division of Inorganic Chemistry of the ACS and was an ACS Councillor for five years. He served on the U. S. National Science Board (1986-1998), which oversees the National Science Foundation, and the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee of Argonne National Laboratory, and the National Research Laboratory Commission of Texas.

Cotton supervised the thesis research of 116 doctoral students as well as hundreds of postdoctoral coworkers. ^[6]

Recognition

Among the awards Cotton received included the U. S. National Medal of Science, the Wolf Prize, and the Priestley Medal, the American Chemical Society's highest recognition. The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in Science and Engineering who have made important The Priestley Medal is the highest honor conferred by the American Chemical Society (ACS and is awarded for distinguished service in the field of Chemistry. The American Chemical Society ( ACS) is a Learned society ( Professional association) based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry ^[6]

In 1995, the Department of Chemistry at Texas A&M along with the local section of the American Chemical Society, inaugurated the annual F. A. Cotton Medal for excellence in chemical research. A second award named in his honor, the F. Albert Cotton Award for Synthetic Inorganic Chemistry, is presented at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society each year. ^[6]

Cotton was a member of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States,and the corresponding academies in Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, and Denmark, as well as the American Philosophical Society. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS is a corporation in the United States whose members serve Pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Russia (Россия Rossiya) or the Russian Federation ( Rossiyskaya Federatsiya) is a transcontinental Country extending China ( Wade-Giles ( Mandarin) Chung¹kuo² is a cultural region, an ancient Civilization, and depending on perspective a National The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located This article is about the country For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic France topics. The Kingdom of Denmark ( ˈd̥ænmɑɡ̊ (archaic ˈd̥anmɑːɡ̊ commonly known as Denmark, is a country in the Scandinavian region of northern Europe He had received twenty-nine honorary doctorates. ^[6]

Run for ACS presidency

Cotton caused a controversy in his 1985 run for the presidency of the American Chemical Society, wherein he mailed a letter to members describing his opponent as “a mediocre industrial chemist” [Ref. 1]. Cotton ultimately lost the bid to his opponent Dr. Ellis Fields of Amoco Chemical.

Death

Cotton died on February 20, 2007 in College Station, Texas from complications of a head injury he suffered in a fall in October 2006. College Station is a city in Brazos County, Texas, situated in Central Texas. ^[9] He was survived by his wife, the former Diane Dornacher, whom he married in 1959, and their two daughters, Jennifer and Jane. ^[2] The Brazos County Sheriff's Department opened an investigation into his death, ruling his passing "suspicious". ^[10]

External links

• Texas A&M biography

References

Ref. 1. Candid Science: Conversations with Famous Chemists. By István Hargittai, 2000, pp 241–242.

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