Stuart A. Rice

Stuart Alan Rice (born 1932 in New York City) is an American theoretical chemist and physical chemist^[1]. He is well-known as a theoretical chemist who also does experimental research. He is currently the Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at The University of Chicago. He received the National Medal of Science in 1999^[1].

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Education and career

Stuart Rice received his bachelor's degree in 1952 from Brooklyn College, and earned his master's and doctorate from Harvard University in 1954 and 1955, respectively. He remained at Harvard as a Junior Fellow for two years before joining the faculty of The University of Chicago in 1957, where he has remained since^[1].

Professor Rice has served the university in a wide variety of capacities during his forty-eight year tenure. He served as the director of the James Franck Institute (the university's center for physical chemistry and condensed matter physics) from 1961 to 1967. He was Chairman of the Department of Chemistry from 1971 to 1976 and was Dean of the Physical Sciences Division from 1981 to 1995^[1].

In addition to his work at the University, he is currently on the Board of Governors at Tel Aviv University^[2] and has served as editor for the journals Chemical Physics Letters^[3] and Advances in Chemical Physics^[4], and co-authored several physical chemistry textbooks with Stephen Berry and John Ross^[5]. He currently maintains a full research lab but has retired from teaching classes.

Honors and awards

Professor Rice's most prestigious award the National Medal of Science, the highest scientific prize awarded in the United States, in 1999. He is a Fellow of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1970 Professor Rice was awarded the Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the nation’s oldest prize for undergraduate teaching, a highly esteemed faculty award at The University of Chicago^[1].

Impact

Over the course of his long career Rice has shaped much debate on theoretical physical chemistry. He is cited on the National Medal of Science "for changing the very nature of modern physical chemistry through his research, teaching and writing, using imaginative approaches to both experiment and theory that have inspired a new generation of scientists." With over 100 doctoral students to his credit, Stuart Rice has had a great impact on the field of physical chemistry simply through the number of research scientists he has trained. If all of these doctors were professors, they would fill several large chemistry departments all by themselves^[6]

Personal life

Prof. Rice is also famous on campus for eating lunch almost every weekday at the university's Quadrangle Club restaurant (a faculty club), where he has dined over 9,000 times. Rice is known to sit at the head of the Chemistry table, not because he is the most senior member of the department, but because he is very tall ^[7].

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