John Ross (chemist)

John Ross ( born October 2, 1926 in Vienna) is an American chemist ( physical chemistry). He was a professor at Stanford University.

Ross left Austria just before the Second World War with his parents because of anti-Semitic persecution under the Nazis. He attended Queens College in New York City with a bachelor 's degree in 1948 (where he served from 1944 to 1946 military service in the U.S. Army) and in 1951 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at Isador Amdur in physical chemistry ( properties of gas transport ) doctorate. As a post - graduate student he was at Yale University with John G. Kirkwood, with whom he studied statistical mechanics of irreversible processes. In 1953 he became an assistant professor and later professor at Brown University and from 1966 he was a professor at MIT ( Frederick George Keyes Professor of Chemistry ). 1975/76 he stood in front of the chemistry faculty. From 1980 he was a professor at Stanford, from 1985 as Camille and Henry Dreyfus Professor. In 2001 he retired.

He dealt with chemical instabilities and oscillating reactions, thermodynamics of systems far from equilibrium, chemical computers and efficiency of chemical and biological machines. In 1991 he constructed with his students a chemical computer that has the possibilities of a universal Turing machine. The logic states are macroscopic parameters such as the concentration of chemical substances. In 1995 the analog of a parallel computer.

In chemical kinetics, it dealt with the determination of complex reaction mechanisms, such as occur in biology, where he developed new approaches based on correlation functions.

He is a multiple honorary doctorates ( Queens College, Weizmann Institute, Bordeaux). In 1992 he received the Irving Langmuir Award, 1999, the National Medal of Science, 2001 Peter Debye Award, Theodore William Richards Medal 2004 and 2002, the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art First Class. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1976. He is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Since 1971 he was in the Council of the Weizmann Institute. 1960 to 1964 he was a Sloan Fellow, 1959/60 Guggenheim Fellow and 1966 Van der Waals professor in Amsterdam.

Writings

  • From the Determination of Complex Reaction Mechanisms to Systems Biology, Annual Reviews of Biochemistry, 77, 2008 479-494
  • With AF Villaverde: Thermodynamics and Fluctuations Far From Equilibrium, Entropy, 12, 2010, pp. 2199-2243
  • Stephen Berry, Stuart A. Rice Physical Chemistry, 2 Volumes, Wiley 1980
  • Stephen Berry, Stuart A. Rice Physical and Chemical Kinetics, Oxford University Press 2002
Queens College, City University of New York John Gamble Kirkwood Weizmann Institute of Science Sloan Fellows Integrated Authority File
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