Richard Zare

Richard N. Zare (born November 19, 1939 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American chemist. He is currently Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University. He earned his B.A. in 1961 and his Ph.D. in 1964 in physical and analytical chemistry at Harvard University under the direction of Dudley Herschbach. He is well known for his research in laser chemistry, resulting in a greater understanding of chemical reactions at the molecular level. He has also written a widely used textbook on the topic of angular momentum in quantum systems.

Additional recommended knowledge

Essential Laboratory Skills Guide

What is the Sensitivity of my Balance?

What is the Correct Way to Check Repeatability in Balances?

He is member of the editorial advisory boards of several scientific publications, among them Chemistry World, Angewandte Chemie, "Central European Journal of Chemistry", "Journal of Separation Sciences" and the "Chinese Journal of Chromatography".

He is the author of various academic papers involving the research of the spectroscopy of chemical compounds. He is co-author of a paper forwarding the hypothesis that a meteorite from Mars, ALH84001, contained traces of Martian life. Other researchers have questioned these findings and they remain controversial.

Award and Fellowships

Fresenius Award, 1974; Member, National Academy of Sciences, 1976; Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1976; Member, American Philosophical Society, 1991; Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London, 1999; Michael Polanyi Medal, 1979; Earle K. Plyler Prize, 1981; Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh Award, 1983; National Medal of Science, 1983; Irving Langmuir Award in Chemical Physics, 1985; Michelson-Morley Award, 1986; Kirkwood Medal, 1986; Willard Gibbs Medal, 1990; Peter Debye Award, 1991; National Academy of Sciences Award in Chemical Sciences, 1991; Dannie-Heineman Preis, 1993; The Harvey Prize, 1993; ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry Award in Chemical Instrumentation, 1995; The Bing Fellowship Award, 1996; California Scientist of the Year Award, 1997; ACS Award in Analytical Chemistry, 1998; E. Bright Wilson Award in Spectroscopy, 1999; Welch Award in Chemistry, 1999; Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science, 2000; Nobel Laureate Signature Award for Graduate Education, 2000; Charles Lathrop Parsons Award, 2001; Faraday Medal, Royal Society of Chemistry, 2001; Laurance and Naomi Carpenter Hoagland Prize, 2003; Foreign member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, Sweden, 2004; Foreign member Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, P.R.C., 2004; James Flack Norris Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Teaching of Chemistry, Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society, 2004; The ACS (New York Section) Nichols Medal, 2004, Wolf Prize in Chemistry 2005.

Representative Publications

• "Hadamard Transform Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry: More Signal, More of the Time," F. M. Fernández, J. R. Kimmel, and R. N. Zare, Angewandte Chemie,42, 30-35 (2003).

• "Chemical Cytometry on a Picoliter-Scale Integrated Microfluidic Chip," H. Wu, A. R. Wheeler and R. N. Zare, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. (USA) 101, 12809-12813 (2004).

• "Laser Control of Chemical Reactions," R. N. Zare, Science, 279, 1875-1879 (1998).

• "Anatomy of Elementary Chemical Reactions," A. J. Alexander and R. N. Zare, J. Chem. Ed.,75, 1105-1118 (1998).

• "Observation and Interpretation of a Time-Delayed Mechanism in the Hydrogen Exchange Reaction," S. C. Althorpe, F. Fernández-Alonso, B. D. Bean, J. D. Ayers, A. E. Pomerantz, R. N. Zare, and E. Wrede, Nature 416, 67-70 (2002).