Good Vibrations: A Fortunate Journey in Reaction Dynamics

Abstract

My professional life owes a great deal to the popular attitudes about science during my youth. As member of the baby boom generation, I benefited from a national commitment to the progress of science and the creation of institutions to support research. The path that took me into science and a career in fundamental research and, finally, into government service reflects those influences on the research enterprise. I encountered inspiring mentors along the way and eventually began independent research at the University of Wisconsin, exploring vibrations in chemical reactions. Studies of vibrationally excited molecules led from collisional energy transfer to unimolecular reactions, to photodissociation, and to bimolecular reactions. The photodissociation and bimolecular reaction experiments were among the first to demonstrate vibrational-state control of a reaction. Along the way, we did spectroscopy to explore vibrational excitation in polyatomic molecules and worked to recapitulate gas-phase studies in liquids.