Dr. David M. Lemal
David Markham Lemal (b. 1934) is the Albert W. Smith Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at Dartmouth College. He received an A.B. degree (summa) from Amherst College in 1955 and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard University in 1959, working with R. B. Woodward. Lemal began his independent academic career at the University of Wisconsin in Madison (1958-65). Despite training in natural product synthesis, his interests turned to highly strained molecules, short- lived species, and concerted reactions. In 1965 he joined the Department of Chemistry at Dartmouth College and helped to fledge its new Ph.D. program, becoming a full professor in 1969. That year he discovered the fascination of fluorocarbon chemistry, which became a major focus of his career. He chaired the department from 1976 to 1979 and in 1981 was appointed the Albert W. Smith Professor of Chemistry. In 2005 Lemal retired from teaching and was appointed Research Professor of Chemistry, continuing work in organofluorine chemistry until 2019. During his career, he mentored in research more than a hundred undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows, and taught chemistry courses for 50 years. Lemal was an active participant in the Gordon Research Conferences. In 1970 he chaired the GRC conference on Hydrocarbon Chemistry and in 1971 the GRC on Heterocyclic Compounds. He was a member of the GRC Board of Trustees (1973–79; chair, 1977–78). Lemal co-chaired the international Winter Fluorine Conferences in 1987 and 1989, then in 1990 chaired the Fluorine Division of the American Chemical Society. From 1996 to 2004 he served on the Society's Committee on Science. He was a National Science Foundation Fellow (1955–58) and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow (1968–70). In 1987 he received the Chemical Manufacturers Association Catalyst Award. He was named New Hampshire Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education in 1989. Lemal won the 2002 American Chemical Society Award for Creative Work in Fluorine Chemistry. In 2011 he became a Fellow of the American Chemical Society.
Dr. Karl O. Christe
Karl Christe is a Research Professor of Chemistry at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA. He earned his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from the Technical University of Stuttgart, Germany with Josef Goubeau. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1962 and worked for Stauffer Chemical in Richmond, CA from 1962 to 1967 as a Senior Research Chemist. In 1967, he joined the Rocketdyne Division of Rockwell International in Canoga Park, CA as a group leader in Advanced Programs. In 1994, he accepted dual positions at the Edwards Air Force Base in Edwards CA as a Senior Scientist and as a Research Professor at the University of Southern California in Canoga Park, CA. In 2004, he moved full time to USC. During his scientific career, his research was centered on boron hydrides, inorganic high polymers, fluoro carbons of industrial interest, high-energy materials for rocket propulsion, chemical lasers, explosives, solid propellant gas generators, naked fluoride compounds, poly nitrogen and poly azide chemistry, molecular spectroscopy, and the development of quantitative scales for Lewis acidity and oxidizer strength. He has worked as a consultant for Chrysler, Science and Technology Applications, US Enrichment Corp., E. Merck Scientific, Rocketdyne, Aerojet, Boeing, Raytheon, Pratt & Whitney, Havelide, Microchip Corp., and SKmaterials. Christe has 682 publications (H index 57) in refereed journals with 11649 citations, and 65 patents to his credit. During his career, he has received numerous awards, including four National ACS awards, the Prix Moissan, the ACS Tolman Award, the Alfred Stock Price, the Apollo Achievement Award (NASA), the HEDM/NANO Award (DARPA), and an Honorary Professorship of the Nanjing University of Science and Technology. He is a member of the American Chemical Society, including the Fluorine, Inorganic Chemistry, and Southern California Divisions, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Pyrotechnics Society, the European Academy of Sciences (Liege), the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (Salzburg), the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, and the American Fencing Association. He was a member of the German and American National teams in Fencing and won two National Championships.
Dr. Bruce E. Smart
Bruce was born on October 9, 1945 in Philadelphia, PA and raised in Kansas City, MO, where he received BS degrees in Chemistry and Mathematics from the Univ. of Missouri at Kansas City in 1967. He earned a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at the Univ. of California at Berkeley in 1970 and moved in the same year to Wilmington, DE, to begin his career with the DuPont Co. Bruce spent all of his 35 ½ year career in DuPont Central Research and Central Research & Development as a research scientist and in research management, except for a one year stint in the Elastomers Chemicals Department. He managed groups in Exploratory Chemistry, Organofluorine Chemistry, Advanced Materials, Heterogeneous Catalysis, and Biochemical Science & Engineering. For his last 6 years with CR&D up to his retirement in December 2005, he served as the first Program Director of the DuPont-MIT Alliance on Bio-Based Materials. Bruce has published 99 scientific journal articles, 7 book chapters, and 7 encyclopedia articles, and edited 7 special journal issues and two books, mostly in the field of fluorine chemistry. His is the inventor or a co-inventor on 55 US Patents. He was elected a Fellow of the AAAS in 1992. He has served on numerous boards, including the Industrial Advisory Boards for U. Florida (1987-2001) and U. C. Santa Barbara (2003-2006). He was the last DuPont member of the Board of Editors for Organic Synthesis, Inc. (1982-1989), was Editor-in-Chief (1989), and has been on the Advisory Board since 1990. Amongst several technical journal editorial boards, he was on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Fluorine Chemistry (1987-1996) and then its Senior North American Editor (1997-2006). Bruce is a past Secretary-Treasurer, Chairman (1981) and member of the Executive Committee (1978-82, 2003-2006) of the ACS Division of Fluorine Chemistry, and a member of Sigma Xi and AAAS. He was Co-Chairman and Chairman of the Gordon Research Conference on Physical Organic Chemistry (1988-89) and the ACS Winter Fluorine Conference (1980-81). In 2007 Bruce received the Distinguished Service Award from the Div. of Fluorine Chemistry. He is a 50-year member of the ACS.
Dr. Andrew E. Feiring
Andrew E. Feiring received a B.S. degree in chemistry from Georgetown and a PhD in Organic Chemistry from Brown. After a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia, he joined Central Research at DuPont in 1974. He retired from DuPont as a Senior Research Fellow in Central Research & Development in 2006 after service in a variety of research and technical management positions. After consulting for several companies including Compact Membrane Systems (CMS) in Newport, DE, he joined CMS in 2010 as Senior Research Advisor, where he helped direct new materials research until 2018. In addition, he served as Adjunct Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania from 2008 until 2015; and did volunteer teaching at the Osher Institute of Lifelong Learning in Wilmington, DE. His main research interests are the preparation, properties and applications of organofluorine compounds and fluoropolymers. He is an inventor on 84 issued US patents and has published 70 technical papers and review articles. He is a member of the American Chemical Society, Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Χi, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He served as chairman of the ACS Division of Fluorine Chemistry in 1991. He received the Charles Pedersen medal from DuPont for distinguished contributions to fluorine chemistry in 2003 and the ACS Delaware Section award in recognition for outstanding achievements in research in 2022.
Dr. Alain R. Tressaud
Alain R. Tressaud is Emeritus Research Director at ICMCB-CNRS, Bordeaux, France. He got his PhD at University Bordeaux in 1969 under the guidance of Prof. P. Hagenmuller. In 1972 he spent at UC Berkeley a post-doctoral stay as NATO fellow in the group of Prof. N. Bartlett. He is presently Vice-President of the European Academy of Sciences, after being the President (2017-18). He is member of several other European scientific institutions, such as EASA-Salzburg (Austria), WSSET (UK), Disting. Fellow SCF (France). He is Guest Professor at Southeast Univ., Nanjing, China until 2025. His scientific interest covers varied fields, e.g. synthesis, physical chemical characterizations, applications in fluorine chemistry, solid state chemistry & materials sciences. His works also deal with surface modification of materials and intercalation chemistry. His scientific production includes more than 370 papers in international journals, 25 chapter contributions in books and 12 internationalized patents. In addition, he edited 12 books including the Editor-in-Chief responsibility of the book series “Advances in Fluorine Science” (2006-2008), and “Progress in Fluorine Science”, (2016-2019). His book :”Fluorine a paradoxical element”, appeared at Elsevier-USA in 2019. He launched regular cooperative and exchange programs within European Community, USA, India, Japan, Russia, China. He served as Chairman or co-Chairman in numerous international scientific events, such as 13th and 17th ESFC, Bordeaux and Paris (2001, 2013); Symposia in honor of Prof. Neil Bartlett, 224th and 234th ACS Meetings, Boston, (2002, 2007) ; French-Japanese Seminars on Fluorides (FJSF) since Sarlat, France (1993); Intersiberian International Seminars on Advanced Inorganic Fluorides (ISIF), since Novosibirsk, Russia (2003); 1st and 2nd IISFC, Delhi and Hyderabad (2012, 2014). He founded and chaired until 2008 the French Network on Fluorine Chemistry, sponsored by CNRS. He received several International awards: 2008-Nuclear Energy Agency Award of French Academy of Sciences, 2011- ACS Award on Creative Works in Fluorine Chemistry, International Henri Moissan Prize (2012), 2019-Fray International Sustainability Award. A Symposium was held in his honor: - “Tressaud International Symposium on Solid State Chemistry for Applications and Sustainable Development”, during the “Sustainable Industrial Processing Summit”, Cyprus, (2019).
Dr. Shlomo Rozen
Shlomo Rozen was born in Bulgaria and arrived in Israel as a small child. He received his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, under the supervision of, the late Ernst D. Bergmann, and I. Shahak. He spent 3 years in the Research Institute for Medicine and Chemistry, Cambridge, MA, with the Nobel laureate Sir D. H. R. Barton, R. H. Hesse, and M. M. Pechet, where he started working with elemental fluorine. In 1976, he joined the School of Chemistry at the Tel Aviv University where he assumed the position of Professor in 1989. In 1997, he was nominated the Head of the School of Chemistry a position he held until 2001. He is the recipient of the “Teva Founders” award (1994), Josef Kryss professor in Organic Chemistry (1999), the 2004 Israel Chemical Society award for excellence in chemistry and the 2005 ACS Award for Creative Work in Fluorine Chemistry. Rozen published nearly 250 scientific papers and is an inventor on 13 patents. For many years, he held a position of a visiting scientist at the Central Research Department of the DuPont Company in Delaware USA. His main goal in chemistry is to demonstrate that elemental fluorine can be a very useful reagent in both fluorine, and general organic chemistry. He is trying to emphasize that chemists should discard their unjustified fear and prejudice against this long known but somewhat neglected element.
Dr. Paul Resnick
Paul Resnick earned his B.A. degree in chemistry from Swarthmore College (PA) and his Ph.D. degree at Cornell University with W. T. Miller. Following postdoctoral work at the University of California (Berkeley) he joined the DuPont Company in 1962 doing research on organofluorine chemistry until he retired with the rank of DuPont Fellow. In 1996 he received the DuPont Lavoisier Medal for Scientific Achievement. Since 2004 he has been the sole proprietor of FluoroScience LLC, a consulting company specializing in fluorine chemistry. His research interests include the preparation of fluorinated monomers and polymers such as HFPO, perfluorinated vinyl ethers and polymers including Nafion®, amorphous fluoropolymers (Teflon AF®) plus environmental questions surrounding fluorinated materials. Resnick holds more than 75 patents, some of which are commercially useful. In 1995 he received the American Chemical Society Award for Creative Work in Fluorine Chemistry. He is an ACS Fellow. Resnick has been a member of the Fluorine Division since its inception and has served in multiple capacities on its executive committee including chair in 1985. He was a co-organizer of the 12th International Symposium on Fluorine Chemistry held in Santa Cruz, CA in 1988 and Chair of the 7th ACS Winter Fluorine Conference in 1985.
Dr. Darryl D. DesMarteau
Darryl DesMarteau earned his B.S. degree in chemistry from Washington State University in 1963 and his Ph.D. degree from University of Washington in 1966. Following his doctoral work, he joined Northeastern University as an assistant professor from 1966 to 1971 and then he continued his career at Kansas State University as a professor from 1971 to 1982. He became a professor and head of the chemistry department at Clemson University from 1982 to 1989 and obtained the title of Tobey-Beaudrot Professor of Chemistry from 1989 to 2011 when he finally obtained the title of Emeritus professor in 2011. His career includes an outstanding number of honors and awards such as the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow (1975-77), USNC for IUPAC Award in 1977, Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Heidelberg (1979-80), Mid-America State Universities Association Honors Lecturer (1981-82), ACS Award for Creative Work in Fluorine Chemistry in 1983, Clemson University Alumni Association Award for Outstanding Research in 1985, South Carolina Governor’s Award for Excellence in Science Research in 1988, Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung Senior U. S. Distinguished Scientist Award in 1988, ACS Charles H. Stone Award in 1983, Washington State University Alumni Achievement Award in 1995, Clemson University College of Engineering and Science Award of Excellence for Faculty Achievement in the Sciences in 1996, Clemson University Board of Trustees Award for Faculty Excellence in 1999, The International Henri Moissan Prize in Fluorine Chemistry in 2006, Clemson University College of Engineering and Science Faculty Mentoring Award in 2007, ACS Division of Fluorine Chemistry, Distinguished Service Award in Fluorine Chemistry in 2009 and Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2010. Darryl DesMarteau has 330 total publications including 18 patents and, he has been invited and contributed to more than 550 lectures worldwide.