Prize Recipient

Daniel M. Neumark
University of California, Berkeley

Citation:

"For his pioneering work in reaction and cluster dynamics using transition state spectroscopy and time-resolved femtosecond photoelectron spectroscopy."

Background:

Daniel Neumark was born in 1955 in Chicago, IL.  He was an undergraduate of Harvard University, where he earned a B.A. in Chemistry and Physics and an M.A. in Chemistry in 1977. He was a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley in the research group of Prof. Yuan Lee, and received his Ph.D. in 1984. He then carried out post-doctoral research at the University of Colorado, Boulder.  In 1986, he joined the Chemistry Department at U.C. Berkeley as an Assistant Professor, where he still resides.  He is best known for experiments in which he used negative ion photodetachment to probe and characterize the transition state of chemical reactions, and for the development of time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy of negative ions. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received the ACS Nobel Laureate Signature Award (with Martin Zanni), the Bomem-Michelson Award, the William F. Meggers Award, the Irving Langmuir Award, and the Herschbach Medal.  He was Director of the Chemical Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 2000-2010.  He is currently Chair of the Chemistry Department at Berkeley.

Selection Committee:

William C. Stwalley, Chair; R. Jones; W.S. Warren; N. Levinger; X. Zhu