Prize Recipient

Charles S. Stedman
Parmenter Indiana University

Citation:

"For his many important contributions to molecular spectroscopy, energy transfer, and reaction dynamics following his inventions and developments of fluorescence labeling and chemical timing spectroscopies."

Background:

Charles Parmenter completed his B.A. in Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania in 1995. Following two years in the US Air Force with DuPont, he completed his Chemistry Ph.D in 1962 at the University of Rochester with W.A. Noyes, Jr. After postdoctoral research with G.B. Kistiakowsky at Harvard, he began his academic career at Indiana University in 1964. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the AAAS and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

His development of single vibronic level fluorescence spectroscopy in the 1960's provided a general method for reliable vibrational assignment of polyatomic electronic absorption spectra. The technique also led to discovery of the high sensitivity of nonradiative excited electronic state decay rates to vibrational excitation and provided a general approach to single-collision state-to-state vibrational energy transfer in large molecules. His chemical timing fluorescence spectroscopy provided one of the first time-resolved spectroscopic views of intramolceular vibrational redistribution (IVR). His present research includes cross molecular beam probes of state-to-state energy transfer in large molecules, the vibrational dissociation dynamics of polyatomic van der Waals complexes and investigations of how methyl internal rotation on aromatic rings can so greatly influence IVR.