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Reynold C. Fuson

Reynold Clayton Fuson was born in Wakefield, Illinois, on June 1, 1895. He died August 4, 1979. ^[1]^[2]

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Fuson attended Central Normal College in Danville, Indiana, where after one year in 1914 he was certified as a teacher. He received a Bachelors Degree in chemistry from the University of Montana, a Masters Degree from the University of California at Berkeley, and a PhD from the University of Minnesota. He accepted a postdoctoral appointment at Harvard with Professor E. P. Kohler and remained there to serve briefly as an instructor. He joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois in 1927. He retired in 1963 after thirty-five years as a distinguished teacher and researcher. After retirement from the University of Illinois, Fuson spent fourteen years at the University of Nevada as a distinguished visiting professor and then as a professor emeritus.

Fuson published 285 scientific articles and wrote or co-wrote five textbooks, including The Systematic Identification of Organic Compounds with R. L. Shriner. Fuson’s research interests were wide-ranging. He enunciated the principle of vinylogy which is now taught in terms of resonance in valence bond theory, elucidated the mechanism of the conjugate addition of Grignard reagents to unsaturated carbonyls compounds, and discovered stable enols and enediols of sterically hindered molecules. Fuson’s accomplishments were recognized by membership in the National Academy of Sciences. He received the Nichols Medal [1], the Manufacturing Chemists’ Association Award for College Teaching, and the John R. Kuebler Award of Alpha Chi Sigma. He was a member of the editorial boards of Organic Syntheses [2] and the Journal of the American Chemical Society.