W. Albert Noyes, Jr.

William Albert Noyes Jr. called Albert Noyes, (* April 18, 1898 in Terre Haute, Indiana, † November 25, 1980 in Austin, Texas ) was an American chemist. He was a leading expert in photochemistry.

Albert Noyes was the son of the chemist William A. Noyes and Flora Collier Noyes, who died in 1900. He studied at Grinnell College in Iowa, and from 1916 at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, where his father taught. The studies were interrupted by the First World War, where he was in the signal corps in France. He continued his studies in 1919 at the Sorbonne, where he attended lectures by Marie Curie and Jean -Baptiste Perrin, and from 1920 at the University of California, Berkeley, where he took part in the seminars of Gilbert Newton Lewis. In 1922 he was instructor at the University of Chicago. In 1929 he was an associate professor at Brown University, where he received a full professorship in 1935. Here he gained a reputation in photochemistry, which also led to that he attended the University of Rochester as their manager was able to expand the ( generously funded by George Eastman of Eastman Kodak ) chemistry faculty in 1938. During World War II he was involved among other things on the gas mask development. After that, he was at the University of Rochester again, where he 1956-1958 College of Arts and Sciences in 1952 and Dean of the Graduate School. In 1963 he retired. After his retirement he went directly to the University of Texas at Austin, where he taught for another 17 years and conducted research.

He received the Priestley Medal (1954) and the Willard Gibbs Medal ( 1957), the Patterson Award ( 1963) and the Parsons Award ( 1970). He had many honorary doctorates (1964 University of Illinois, University of Rhode Iceland, Sorbonne, Indiana, Ottawa, Montreal, Rochester, Carleton University, Laval University, Grinnell College). In 1948, he received the Medal for Merit in the U.S. and the King 's Medal for Service in the Cause of Freedom in the UK.

1939 to 1948 he was editor of the Chemical Review and 1950-1962 of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. 1952 to 1964 he was editor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry from 1963 to 1969 and co- editor of Advances in Photochemistry ( founded in 1963 ). In 1947 he was president of the American Chemical Society. Noyes was from 1959 to 1963 also President of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, after he was its vice- president from 1947 to 1951.

He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Academy of Sciences. In 1953 he became an officer of the Legion of Honour. He was an honorary member of the French, Belgian, Spanish, Portuguese and British chemical companies.

Since 1921 he was married to Sabine Onillon, whom he met at the Sorbonne.

Writings

• Philip Albert Leighton The Photochemistry of Gases, New York, Reinhold 1941