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Vol. 34 No. 5
September-October 2012

IUPAC Wire | News and information on IUPAC, its fellows, and members organizations
See also www.iupac.org/indexes/News

In Memoriam

IUPAC was saddened to learn of the following deaths of Union colleagues. We shall remember them with respect and gratitude for their service to IUPAC.

Prof. Rolf E. Bareiss (Germany)—Rolf Eugen Bareiss, who was almost 80, died on 24 April 2012. He was a respected titular member of the IUPAC Commission on Macromolecular Nomenclature (now Division IV, Polymer Division) from 1983 to 1993. He was involved in a number of important IUPAC nomenclature recommendations. For example, he was the principle author of the 1994 ”Graphical Representation (Chemical Formula) of Macromolecules” in Pure and Applied Chemistry (1994) 66, 2469–2482. As editor of renowned scientific journals, he was well aware of the nomenclature and terminology problems in polymer science and he effectively contributed to the improvement of “the chemical language.”

Bareiss studied chemistry from 1952 to 1959 at the German universities Stuttgart, Tübingen, and Kiel and passed his Diplom-exam in 1960 (Stuttgart). As a Fulbright scholar he spent two years with A.B. Burg at the University of California (Los Angeles) finishing his diploma thesis there on B-N compounds. He started his doctoral thesis in 1962 at the Forschungsinstitut für Pigmente und Lacke e.V., Stuttgart (K. Hamann) and was graduated Dr. rer. nat. in 1965 with a thesis on ‘Synthesis of blockcopolymers and characterization of their sequence length distribution’. He subsequently worked as Chief Scientific Assistant at the ETH Zürich with Hopf and Elias and became in 1997 editor, later editor-in-chief, at Hüthig & Wepf until his retirement in 1997.
His scientific work dealt with dispersity of polymers and its influence on physical properties like the Flory Constant, determination of the unperturbed dimensions, and the second virial coefficient.

He liked to travel, to meet people, and was an enthusiastic member of the IUPAC Commission of Macromolecular Chemistry. In fact, his open attitude and enthusiasm encouraged members of the Commission to carry on his work after his retirement; the author is one of them. We have lost a friend and expert. Those who had the pleasure to meet and work with Bareiss will not forget him.

written by Michael Hess, Secretary Polymer Division

Prof. H. Lawrence Clever (United States)—H. Lawrence Clever (Larry) died on 21 May 2012. He was born in 1923 in Mansfield, Ohio, to Vance and Leona. He received three degrees in chemistry from The Ohio State University: BS, 1945; MS, 1949; and PhD, 1951. He held various positions over the years: junior chemist, Shell Development Co., 1945-1947; instructor and research associate, Duke University, 1951–1954; instructor to professor, Emory University, 1954–1992; participant, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 1957; research associate, University of Michigan, 1963–1964; Polymer Research Institute, University of Massachusetts (Amherst), 1972–1973; director, Solubility Data Project, Emory University, 1981–1992; visiting professor, University of Melbourne (Australia), 1988; professor emeritus of chemistry, Emory University, 1992–2012.

I first met Clever when I arrived at Duke University in February of 1953 as a beginning graduate student. He was a post-doctoral fellow working for P.M. Gross, the former head of the department who was then dean of the graduate school. The topic Larry was working on was the solubility of gases in liquids; I chose that topic for my dissertation research. He had built the apparatus, and would soon be completing his time as a post-doc before moving to a faculty position at Emory University. Clever served with distinction there for 40 years, retiring as a professor emeritus of chemistry.

Larry had a great deal of experience in the practical matters of doing physical chemistry research. He was my mentor and taught me many skills. In those days in physical chemistry you could not succeed in laboratory work unless you had skills in carpentry, machining, glass-blowing, electronics (vacuum tube!), solvent purification, vacuum pumps, and cleaning glassware. My meager skills were quickly advanced by Larry. The summer following his going to Emory he returned to Duke and we worked together. In fact, we worked 12 hour shifts around-the-clock as long as the apparatus was functioning! We became fast friends.

In my first academic position at the Illinois Institute of Technology I returned to research on the solubility of gases in liquids. Larry and I continued making contributions in this field for the rest of our lives, sometimes in joint research and sometimes independently. Indeed, the review article we wrote on the subject is our most widely cited paper (over 400 times).

This interest in the solubility of gases in liquids got us invited to a meeting in Canada that led to the formation of the Solubility Data Commission (V.6.1) of IUPAC. The organizer of this group was Professor E.S. Kertes of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. We both served as members of this commission for many years. For a time Larry was the chair of the Gas Solubility Subcommission. He edited many volumes, and contributed to the volumes of other members of the commission. He and his wife Ruth attended many international meetings of the group, and made friends with scientists from many countries.

In his retirement, Larry was actively working on “update” volumes involving various gases. At the time of his death, the one on the solubility of oxygen and ozone was essentially complete, and the volume on rare gas solubilities was close to completion.

Although the solubility of gases in liquids was his main interest, Clever also published papers in many other areas. He was an excellent teacher who inspired many students. He published a number of articles in chemical education. Clever’s interest in surface tension led him to recently write an article on the parachor. A search via SciFinder Scholar came up with 268 entries. Following is a summary of the areas to which he contributed: calorimetry; the solubility of sparingly soluble salts of metals such as Pb, Hg, Zn, and Cd; excess Gibbs energies and refractive indexes of various systems; the solubility of gases in liquids; several review articles on the solubility of gases in liquids; the Setchenov salt-effect parameter; many critical evaluations in the Solubility Data Series volumes; surface tension and density of many solvents and mixtures; Rayleigh scattering and the thermodynamic properties of systems; phase studies; and the ion product of water. 

Ruth and Larry Clever have a loving and close family in their many relatives and, especially in their son John, his wife Anne, and their two grand children, Faye and David.
           
One thing that the Clevers and my wife Charlotte and I have shared is a love of hiking. For 15 or more years we met annually in Gatlinburg, rented a chalet, and hiked in the Smoky Mountains.
                                   
I miss my friend and colleague of 59 years. He and Ruth have always been “family,” and it is hard to lose a brother. Knowing him has enriched my life and that of many others, and that is an accomplishment towards which we all can strive.

written by Rubin Battino <[email protected]>

Prof. Toshiro Masuda (Japan)—Longtime IUPAC member Toshiro Masuda, professor emeritus of material chemistry at Kyoto University, Japan, died 22 March 2012 at age 74.

Masuda was an eminent scientist and educator with great leadership in polymer science. He stared his IUPAC activities as a member of the Working Party (now, Subcommittee) Structure and Properties of Commercial Polymers, and was an associate member (1988–1997) and a titular member (1998–1999) on the Commission on Polymer Characterization and Properties.

Masuda was born in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, in 1937. He graduated in industrial chemistry from Kyoto University in 1960, attained an M.S. degree in 1962, and joined the Nippon Steel Corporation as a researcher. He moved back to Kyoto University as an assistant professor of polymer chemistry in 1965 and obtained a Ph.D. in 1973. He was appointed to an associate professor in 1978.

As a rheologist, Masuda had much interest in the entanglement and interaction of polymers. His most impressive work on this matter involved the dynamic viscoelatic properties of monodisperse polystyrenes. He was also very interested in anionic polymerization. After that his research interests spread over a wide area of rheology such as polymer processing, physics of polymer networks, and biorheology. Masuda also participated in projects of the working party; more than 10 papers were published in PAC or other journals as outputs from these projects.
           
Masuda is remembered not only as an outstanding rheologist but also as very humorous member of our working party and subcommittee. He is survived by his wife, Sada, who often accompanied him to meetings.

Prof. József Nyitrai (Hungary)—Professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, J. Nyitrai died earlier this year. His association to IUPAC started in 1991 when he became a National Representative on the Commission on Nomenclature of Organic Chemistry, and than an associate member from 1994–2001. From 2002–2003, he was a member of the Advisory Subcommittee of the newly established Chemical Nomenclature and Structure Representation Division (division VIII). He than continued as titular member on Division VIII from 2004 to 2007, associate member from 2008 to 2011. He was also Division VIII Representative on ICTNS from 2006 to 2009, and till this year, involved in several projects.

Dr. Henrik Olesen (Denmark)—Professor at the University Hospital of Copenhagen, Henrik Olesen died 15 April 2012. He is most notably the “founding father” of the NPU terminology (i.e., Nomenclature, Properties, and Units in Laboratory Medicine). He was an associate member on the Commission on Nomenclature, Properties, and Units (VII.C.1) from 1985 to 1997 and again in 2000–2001.

Prof. Anders J. Thor (Sweden)—Professor at the Swedish Standards Institute in Stockholm, Anders J. Thor died on 7 April 2012. He was ISO representative on ICTNS since 2000 and co-author on the IUPAC Green Book. He was a associate member on the Commission on Physicochemical Symbols, Terminology, and Units, from 1994 to 2001 and a National Representative from 2006 to this year.


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