Cornell
(chemistry

May 1993 Issue 56

Drug Delivery Research in the Chemistry Department
"For many years, the major focus of drug research has been on the synthesis or discovery of new drugs. While this continues to be important, increasing attention is being devoted to novel ways of delivering these substances." Robert Longer, "Novel Drug Delivery Systems," Chemistry in Britain, March 1990, pp. 232-236.

When I was a child, medicine was administered by means of nasty-tasting tablets and even nastier-tasting syrups taken several times a day, and, worst of all, by injection with needles that were at least eighteen inches long and half an inch in diameter! Almost all these treatments, whether for earaches, stomachaches, viruses, or bacterial infections made me violently ill and did little to allay my discomfort.
We've not eliminated the tablets and syrups, or even the needles, but we have made them more effective, less toxic, and easier to take. We've also added new items to the list of drug delivery media: today's "hot" systems are implants and patches.

Chemists and chemical engineers are working on better ways to control the release of therapeutic agents so as to achieve optimum blood levels without toxicity; ways to "target" drugs to a particular body site so a smaller quantity of drug can be used; "smart" devices that mimic the responses of the body's own glands, such as membranes that release insulin in response to the presence of glucose, or naloxone in response to morphine.
Several Cornell chemists are doing research that is directly or indirectly related to the development of new drug delivery systems. They offer the following brief descriptions of their projects.
—Donna Middleton

Dotsevi Sogah
Professor Dotse Sogah and his group are working on ways to exploit biotechnology and polymer chemistry in order to tailor materials precisely to desired end uses, which might include drug carriers. We know that silk, collagen, elastin, amelogenins, and enamelins consist largely of highly repetitive molecular sequences. These proteins are characterized by molecular structures with strategically placed "active sites." The structural architecture of these molecules affects the way the proteins behave. Up to this point, scientists working on synthetic polymers have been able to control only certain characteristics, such as molecular weight and the formation of block and random copolymers. Controlling the sequence of the polymer chains and introducing highly ordered structures into synthetic polymers has remained elusive.
Materials for medical use must mimic DNA, RNA, proteins, and carbohydrates, which are informational polymers. Informational molecules derive their main properties not simply from their size but

from their ability to encode information. They possess the ability to create chains of specific monomer sequences, and this distinguishes biological life forms and the corresponding complex hierarchies of structure and function from the simpler polymeric materials.
In contrast, synthetic polymers and fibrous proteins such as collagen, elastin, and keratin are structural. The usefulness of structural polymers depends mostly upon their mechanical properties, which in turn depend on molecular weight distribution, size, and monomer type.
Synthetic polymer science does not yet have the precision to create polymers of specific monomer sequences. The development of synthetic methods to form specific monomer sequences has extraordinary potential for materials in which structure and function are incorporated.
Sogah believes it is possible to solve the problem by exploring "Bioorganic Hybrid Polymers," which he defines as linear abiotic macromolecules containing an active biopolymer segment such as

polypeptides, carbohydrates or polynucleotides, and a monomeric or polymeric synthetic organic segment. Specific biological functions and structures built into the biopolymer segment of these hybrid polymers might include molecular recognition sites, biodegradability, and cell surface activity.

Barry Carpenter
Professor Carpenter sees the problem of drug delivery as having two different components — spatial and temporal. In the spatial domain, the problem is to deliver a drug to the right place, whether a particular organ of the body or a particular group of atoms in a molecule. In the temporal domain, the goal is to deliver the drug at the right time. Carpenter has been working on both of these problems.
In collaboration with Professor Robert Schwarcz at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center and Astra Arcus AB Pharmaceutical Company of Sodertalje, Sweden, Carpenter's group has been designing and testing drugs aimed at treatment of certain neurological disorders, including Huntington's disease and temporal-lobe epilepsy. The delivery challenge in this case is a spatial one, and

the target is an organ — the human brain. The task, once an effective drug has been discovered, is to get it past the blood-brain barrier, which, as its name suggests, prevents most compounds dissolved in the blood plasma from getting through to the brain. It is known what kinds of compounds do or do not pass this barrier, and, unfortunately, the drugs found to be most effective for treatment of the neurological problem belong to the class that do not. A technique used to combat this problem is called the'Trojan Horse." One disguises the drug to resemble the kind of molecule that can pass through the blood-brain barrier, and then designs a strategy whereby the true identity of the drug can be revealed once it has reached its target.
Carpenter's research in the temporal domain of drug delivery occurs in collaboration with Professor George Hess in Biochemistry. Here the goal is to detect the opening of channels that permit certain

metal ions to pass into neurons — an event intimately associated with the propagation of nerve impulses. The channels open in response to binding of neurotransmitters to receptor sites on the cell surface. The problem, from an experimental point of view, is that the channel-opening event takes place so quickly; by the time one has added the neurotransmitter to the cell and has had a chance to examine it, all of the channels

have already opened up. Here, too, a disguise strategy is helpful. Carpenter and his co-workers have synthesized derivatives of the neurotransmitters that are attached to a large group preventing their binding to the receptors. The trick is that the large group is connected to the neurotransmitter by a link that can be broken by the action of ultraviolet light of the correct wavelength. The experiment involves bathing the neuron (only one is

needed with modern techniques) in a solution containing the modified neurotransmitter. Since the blocking group prevents binding of the neurotransmitter to the receptors, the ion channels stay closed. Now, whenever convenient, one can apply a short pulse of UV light from a laser to the cell and its surrounding solution. The blocking groups drop off the neurotransmitters, which then bind to the receptors and cause the opening of the ion channels.

Bruce Ganem

In the laboratories of Professor Bruce Ganem, several projects aimed at the timed release of bioactive substances have led to research on new mechanisms of drug delivery. As part of a project with scientists in the Veterinary College to develop a new synthetic vaccine against bovine brucellosis, Ganem and research associate Joanne Widom began investigating a new way of slowly delivering antigen from an inert reservoir. They settled on the use of zeolites, which are framework aluminosilicates that have been widely used for ion-exchange and catalysis. Ganem's lab found that long, linear polyamines can penetrate the interstitial space of common zeolites and undergo either ion exchange with alkaline earth metal cations or self-assembly into spherical chelates with transition metals. Once formed, the chelates lock the polyamine inside the zeolite, much like the fabled "monkey's fist in the cookie jar,"

so that only a subsequent slow ionexchange process under physiological conditions can later promote their release at a controlled rate.

In another project, Professor Ganem and graduate student Steven B. King are working on a chemical glucose sensor coupled to an implantable insulin delivery system with a built-in on/off switch for insulin release. Patients suffering from Type I ("juvenile") diabetes have lost key insulin-producing islet cells in their pancreas and rarely achieve normal blood glucose concentrations, even with multiple daily injections of insulin. Some electromechanical devices have been constructed for on-line serum glucose monitoring with continuous insulin infusion. However, this equipment is bulky, very expensive to use, and severely restricts a patient's mobility. Recent research has confirmed the importance of maintaining near-normal levels of blood glucose in reducing, if not preventing, many of the cardiovascular, renal, and retinal complications of diabetes. Ganem's idea for an artificial pancreas is designed around the interplay of carbohydrate-derived gels and plant proteins called lectins.

"Drug delivery systems can play a significant part in the therapeutic efficacy of the agent being formulated.. .New therapies may result from either a new or an older drug in a precise programmed delivery form; the field is challenging, socially beneficial, and potentially very profitable."
Neil B. Graham, "Controlled Drug Delivery Systems," Chemistry & Industry, 6 August 1990, pp. 482-486.

Cornell Team Approach

The Cornell High-Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) is the centerpiece of an effort by Cornell University scientists to find a new way to design drugs for AIDS and other diseases.
Armed with a $3.31 million grant from the National Institutes of General Medical Sciences, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, four faculty members whose laboratories have a high-speed electronic link for sharing graphic images of complex molecules and other data will work on an approach to structure-based drug design.
Steven Ealick, a professor of biochemistry, is leading the computer design effort. Bruce Ganem will head the experimental thrust of the program, consisting of chemical synthesis of potential drugs. His work, he said, will provide a "reality check" on structure-

based design by showing how well candidate drugs actually bind to target molecules.
Other members of the team are David Shalloway and Andrew Karplus, faculty members in the Section of Biochemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology.
Ealick and Ganem hope to take advantage of a new understanding that the old "lock and key" model of interactions between drugs and receptors is inadequate. Scientists now believe they need to know what the lock and key look like when the key is inserted and turned, according to Ganem. Practitioners of structure-based drug design have found the task more complicated because the geometries of both the target molecule and the drug often undergo substantial changes when the two interact A detailed knowledge of what each looks like by itself may say

little about the more important drugreceptor complex.
The team expects its techniques to be applicable to many medical problems. For example, PNP (purine nucleoside phosphorylase) is an enzyme present in red blood cells and other tissues that recycles substances required for normal cell growth. Unfortunately for AIDS therapy, the enzyme also destroys DDI, a newly approved AIDS drug. Ealick and Ganem think that DDI may be much more effective in the presence of a supplemental drug that inhibits PNP. One of their goals is to develop such an inhibitor.
One of the most ambitious aspects of the project is an effort, headed by Shalloway, to improve the ability of scientists to compute the strengths of the binding interaction between drugs and targets. The computations must take into account molecular motions, which vary from the large and slow vibrations of the whole protein, that take place on the microsecond scale, to the ultrafast vibrations of chemical bonds, that occur in femtoseconds.

Improving Science Literacy

Improving undergraduate college education in the natural sciences and mathematics is now a national priority. "Science literacy," however defined, is assumed to be necessary in our democratic society so that our citizenry will be capable of and committed to understanding and solving complex socialtechnological problems. "Improving science education" also implies recruiting and retaining talented students in science majors.
Responding to these national agenda, the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell voted in the spring of 1990 to increase the science and mathematics requirements for the undergraduate degree. Previously, Arts and Sciences

undergraduates have been responsible for completing at least one sequence of two courses in the same scientific discipline and were encouraged, but not required, to complete two semesters of mathematics (usually calculus) or one semester of calculus and one semester of computer science. The college's new distribution requirements oblige each student to complete at least four courses from the natural sciences and quantitative and formal reasoning. At the same time, the new requirement offers students much more flexibility in how they satisfy the requirement At least two courses must be in science, but they need notform a sequence or even be in the same discipline.

With all that in mind, the Department of Chemistry in spring 1991 instituted Chemistry 203, The World of Chemistry, a one-semester course for nonscience majors (see "An Essay on Teaching Science" by Bruce Ganem in Issue 53).
Jerrold Meinwald has been awarded the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship, an award that will relieve him of teaching duties for the next three years, allowing him to develop and initiate an interdisciplinary undergraduate course. He is working on another course for nonscience majors, Chemistry 204.

James Lynn Hoard 1905-1993
Professor Emeritus James Lynn Hoard died April 10, 1993, at the age of 87.
Born December 28, 1905, in Beckham County, Oklahoma Territory, Hoard moved with his family to Seattle, and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Washington where he received his BS (1927) and MS (1929) degrees.
He received his PhD degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1932. He was one of the first students in the laboratory of Linus Pauling, where he pioneered the use of Xray diffraction in the study of crystal structures. Pauling called him "a talented and dedicated researcher who contributed significantly to our knowledge of structural chemistry of coordination complexes, certain elements such as boron, and the structure of regions of hemoglobins where oxygen molecules are bonded to iron."
Hoard was an instructor at Stanford University from 1932 to 1935 and at the Ohio State University from 1935 to 1936. He joined the faculty of Cornell University in 1936. Robert E. Hughes PhD '53 noted his mentor's studies of binary compounds of the element boron. "He led the discovery of the basic structures of the element itself, perhaps the most complicated system across the Periodic Table," Hughes said. "His name became synonymous with boron chemistry worldwide."
Professor Hoard was a specialist in crystalline and molecular structures. He systematized the crystal chemistry of coordination number metallo-organic compounds, and brought order to the understanding of compounds in which the number of ligands to a central metal ion ranged from seven or eight upward. In his later years, he made extensive studies of the metalloporphyrins and the mechanism by which oxygen is taken up and released by hemoglobin in living systems. Professor Hoard brought deep insight and critical thinking to all his research; his writings were models of precision and clarity.
Professor Hoard was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1948, 1960, and 1966. In 1977 he received the ACS award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Inorganic Chemistry. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, American Crystallographic Association, and the New York Academy of Sciences. He was an excellent musician and was a member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia. He is survived by his wife, Florence, three sons, Thomas, Laurence, and David, and five grandchildren.
Memorial contributions may be made to Cornell Plantations, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, or to the Union of Concerned Scientists, 26 Church St., Cambridge, MA 02238.

Undergraduates Learn from Alumni

Thefollowing excerpts are from a recent article written by senior staff writer Carole Stone for the Cornell Chronicle.

externship program placed 255 students with alumni. This year, there were more than 450 opportunities.

Do not expect to get hands-on experience shadowing a brain surgeon, Christine Schelhas-Miller tells pre-medical students when they inquire about the externships arranged through her office. But you can expect to observe a doctor close-up, she adds, and you may be invited inside an operating room — where students have been known to faint

Andrew Stratton, a 1992 graduate with a degree in biochemistry, spent two-and-ahalf days following Brian Heppard '90, an entry-level employee at Merck and Co.'s manufacturing division in West Point, Pennsylvania, last January. He said he learned more in those few days about what to do with his degree than in any other experience at Cornell.

Schelhas-Miller matches students who would like to explore a career field with alumni willing to take a student or two into their workplaces for a day, two days or even a week.
"The idea is for students to see what people do in a particular workplace, expose them to its culture and enable them to ask questions in a situation that is not an interview," said Schelhas-Miller, assistant director for Arts and Sciences of the University Career Center and director of the 3-year-old Cornell Extern Program.
The visits take place during Cornell's winter break. In January 1992, the

"I didn't know anything about industry before I went there, but I had been looking for an alternative to going into medicine right away," he said. At Merck, he got a glimpse of the way pharmaceuticals are made, spent some time in the biological quality control section of the plant and gave serious thought to going to work there. The company later offered him a position.
Started as an Arts and Sciences project, the externship now welcomes students from all colleges. Students in colleges whose alumni are active in the extern program are given first priority in applying to the program in the fall.

Members of the President's Council of Cornell Women and the Cornell Asian Alumni Association, the Cornell Black Alumni Association and the American Indian Program also sponsor externships for which women and minorities are encouraged to apply.
Alumni sponsor externs for many reasons. It keeps them in contact with the university and with students, usually juniors and seniors. It gives them and their staff a chance to "show off," as one alumna put it, or to come down to Earth: "After six years in city government, it is a learning experience for me to remember to put things in English for them and not in government-ese," said Jordana Zubkoff '85 of the Council for excellence in Government.
The most common reason alumni give is that sponsoring an extern gives them a chance to do something to help the university by assisting its latest students.
If you would like to sponsor an undergraduate during next year's winter break, contact Christine Schelhas-Miller at the University Career Center, Barnes Hall, telephone 607-255-5221

Chemistry Days

Enrollment for Chemistry Days in November 1992 never quite reached double digits, so with a great deal of disappointment we cancelled most of the event. We did, however, hold the alumni careers panel on Thursday, November 19. Four alumni returned to campus to talk with chemistry majors about their own career paths.

(L-R) Avery Ellis, AB '72, Andrea Smith, AB '90, Joan Tierney, AB '63, and Anthony Destefano, PhD '76, comprised the alumni careers panel.

At dinner that evening, all four panelists urged us to try again, adding that we should hold it no matter how low the enrollment! We WILL hold Chemistry Day on Friday, October 1, and we hope we'll have fantastic enrollment this time, given that it's at PEAK leaf time. As before, we'll

plan to have an alumni panel on Thursday, September 30. We'll have

programs for spouses and offspring (it's a great chance to bring your college-bound teenagers to see what Cornell classes are like) and

a dinner with faculty on Friday evening. Rooms are available at the Statler, Sheraton, and Best Western. Please mark the date on your

1993 calendars right now, and plan to join us. We'll include more details in subsequent newsletters.

Alumni Gifts

Gifts for Graduate Student Support
Last December Jon Clardy sent a letter to PhD alumni asking them to contribute to the Cornell Campaign by designating a gift for chemistry graduate student support. So far, we have had replies from over 40 alumni who, with matching funds from their employers and former employers, have donated over $31,000.
Some of those gifts were in the form of stock, which is a terrific way to donate to Cornell Chemistry, because the donor gets a substantial charitable income tax deduction while, in most cases, eliminating the capital gains tax.
Not included in that total are funds that will come to the department as proceeds from trusts and bequests.
We're still hearing from grads who want to talk about ways to support programs in the Department of Chemistry. If you would like more information about giving to Cornell Chemistry, please contact our executive director, Dr. Earl Peters, at 122 Baker Laboratory, 607-255-8105.

Dr. and Mrs. Walter McCrone Honor Professor Chamot
Walter McCrone, Jr. '38, PhD '42 and his wife, Lucy, recently took advantage of the Cornell Campaign Challenge to complete funding for a professorship in the College of Arts and Sciences. Named the Emile M. Chamot Professorship in Chemistry, it honors Emile Monnin Chamot, a Cornell professor of chemical microscopy.
Known to friends and colleagues as "Chammy," Professor Chamot received his BS in chemistry in 1891 from Cornell and became an instructor in the chemistry department. He earned a Cornell PhD in 1897. After a year in Europe, he returned to Cornell as an assistant professor. By 1910 he was a full professor teaching courses in toxicology, sanitary chemistry, and chemical microscopy. He retired in 1936.
Dr. McCrone studied chemical microscopy the last year Professor Chamot taught the course and has retained a lifelong interest in light microscopy. He founded the McCrone Research Institute, a not-for-

profit corporation in Chicago that teaches microscopy, crystallography, and ultramicroanalysis.
Eager to sustain the tradition begun by Professor Chamot, Dr. McCrone teaches microscopy at Cornell regularly. "Since about 1984, I've been teaching a summer course which is essentially a semester course compressed into one week," said Dr. McCrone. "It's a regular feature now, and I enjoy it thoroughly." In equipping the classroom he uses at Cornell, he was even able to track down Professor Chamot's laboratory benches. Dr. McCrone has also been instrumental in arranging for gifts of equipment for the laboratory and has supported it generously himself. Now that the classroom is fully equipped, "I go out to Ithaca, walk in, and start talking. It's worked out very well," observed Dr. McCrone.
Over the years chemistry students and graduate students from textiles, chemical engineering, physics, biotechnology, and biochemistry have all had an opportunity to study with Dr. McCrone. In addition, staff members from Cornell's Office of Environmental Health and a conservator with the Cornell Library system have also taken the course.

Over the years, Dr. and Mrs. McCrone have supported an endowment fund in honor of Professor Chamot. The Cornell Campaign Challenge has allowed them to fulfill their dream of funding a professorship. Thus through the McCrones' generosity, Cornellians will continue to benefit from Professor Chamot's work—as they have since 1891.

WTalter and Lucy McCrone

Alumni News

Louise O'DonneU Brownell AB '33, writes that she has used her chemistry in two ways: in quality control at H. J. Heinz Co. and as a medical lab technician at a local hospital, Medma Memorial. Her son, Will Brownell, has an AB cum laude '71 from Cornell and is now studying at Columbia for his PhD in American history.
Benjamin Thomas Peng N. Chu, PhD '59, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at SUNY Stony Brook, has received the 1993 High Polymer Physics Prize from the American Physical Society. The prize is for his work in the structure and dynamics of supermolecules.
In the March 8 edition of C&EN, Rong Feng, PhD '88, was mentioned for his work with Yasuo Konishi at the Biotechnology Research Institute of the National Research Council of Canada, on the fragmentation of antibody ions by collisional activation in a tandem mass spectrometer. Feng notes in the article that the work owes much to pioneering research by Joseph Loo, PhD '88, and coworkers at Pacific Northwest Laboratories in Richland, Washington, on the structural analysis of large biomolecules.
Joseph L. Glajch, AB '75, writes that since leaving Cornell he has received his PhD in analytical chemistry at the University of Georgia in 1978 under the direction of Professor L.B. (Buck) Rogers. He joined the Central Research and Development Department of E.I. du Pont de Nemours in Wilmington, Delaware, and spent nine years there in a variety of scientific roles, including work in the

process chemistry, molecular biology, and analytical chemistry groups. In 1988, he moved to the Medical Products Department in the Radiopharmaceuticals R&D Division, North Billerica, Massachusetts. He is currently the Associate Director of New Product Chemistry in this division, which is now part of the Du Pont Merck Pharmaceutical Company. In addition, he is currently the Chair of the Analytical Division of the American Chemical Society (he sees quite a few Cornell alumni and faculty at the national meetings and at the chemistry breakfast). He is married to the former Mary Beth Dickey and they have three children, Brent (21), Kelly (10), and Scott (7).
Peter S. Kim, AB '79, has received the National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology. The award, consisting of a gold medal and $20,000, is given for recent notable discovery in molecular biology by a young scientist. Peter is a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and an associate professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both in Cambridge.
Leo Mandelkern, AB '42, PhD '49, R.O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Florida State University, is the 1993 recipient of the Charles Goodyear Medal Award by the Rubber Division of the American Chemical Society for outstanding invention, innovation, or development that has resulted in a significant change in or contribution to the rubber industry.

Herbert Y. Meltzer, M.D., AB '88, who is the Douglas D. Bond Professor of Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University, has been awarded the Lieber Prize for research in schizophrenia by the National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Depression. This prize, the highest award in schizophrenia research, was given for his work in developing a drug treatment for schizophrenia that is effective in most of the 30 percent of patients not previously helped by any available treatment. Dr. Meltzer has also developed a theory of its mechanism of action and is continuing to integrate basic and clinical research.
Michael E. Silver, PhD '82, an associate professor of chemistry at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, has received a Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation Scholar/ Fellow award.
—In Memoriam—
William J. Argersinger, Jr., AB '38, PhD '42, December 14,1992, Lawrence, Kansas.
Richard A. Dreher, BS '57, December 23,1992.
Paul R. Gassman, PhD '60, April 20, 1993, St. Paul, Minnesota.
Stanley D. Koch, PhD '50, December 5, 1992, West Haven, Connecticut
Robert W. Holley, PhD '47, February 11, Los Gatos, California.
Beverley V. Meigs, AB '33, December 7, 1992, Basking Ridge, New Jersey.
Lawrence E. Nielsen, PhD '45, February 15,1992.
James K. Shillington, PhD '52, October 4,1992, Lexington, Virginia.

Faculty and Department News

Faculty Honors

colleagues and former students during the May 16,1992, celebration in honor of

Harold Scheraga has received an award Scheraga, who is now a professor from the International Society of Quantum emeritus.

Chemistry and Quantum Pharmacology for his outstanding contributions to theoretical biology. Professor Scheraga has also received an Honorary DSc from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology. He joins the distinguished list of

The Arden M. Bremer Memorial Prize in Music honors the memory of the pianist, organist, and teacher who was, from 1988 to 1990, an administrative aide in the Meinwald group.

recipients that includes Albert Einstein,

Niels Bohr, Theodore von Karman, David Research Funding

Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister Yitzhak

Rabin, and the sixth President of the State Two faculty members have recently won

of Israel, Chaim Herzog.

funding from NIH for new projects.

Barbara A. Baird has received a John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for her work on "The Aggregation of Immunological Receptors on Cell Surfaces." Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of unusually distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment

Jerrold Meinwald is studying "Stereochemically Pure Anesthetics as Mechanistic Probes" ; Harold Scheraga has won support for "Mechanism of Action of Thrombin on Fibrinogen." NSF has awarded Barry Carpenter a new grant for his work on "Intramolecular Dynamics of Organic Reactions," and Jerrold Meinwald a grant for his work on "Biosynthesis of Insect Defensive

Secretions." Jon Clardy has received

Ithaca High School Awards funding from FISONS for "Crystal
Structures of Ligands." Jean Frechet has

The Ithaca Board of Education approved two new student awards at its January 26 meeting. The Harold A. Scheraga Award for biology and chemistry was initiated by

received funding from IBM/San Jose for his work on "Monodispersed Spherical Polymer Particles by Dispersion Polymerization" and from DHHS/NIHNIGMS for "Porous Polymer Rods as

Chromatographic or Reactive Media."

Debye Lecture Series 1992-93

Harold A. Scheraga

John T. Yates, Jr., R.K. Mellon Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Pittsburgh Surface Science Center of the University of Pittsburgh, delivered the 1992-93 Debye Lecture series on April 26, 28, and 29, 1993. Yates's research in surface chemistry and physics includes both the structure and spectroscopy of

John T. Yates, Jr.
surface species, the dynamics of surface processes, and the development of new methods for research in surface chemistry. He is the author of over 350 publications in the field.
The Debye Lectures are sponsored annually by the Cornell section of the American Chemical Society. The series was established in 1962 to honor Peter J.W. Debye, Nobel Prize-winning chemist and former chairman of the Department of Chemistry, who was at the time a professor emeritus. Outstanding scientists from every field of chemistry have been invited to hold the title "Debye Lecturer" since 1962.
Don't ForgetReunion Open House 1993
The annual reunion open house will take place on Friday, June 11 from 1:30 to 4:30 pm in Room 125 Baker Laboratory. We will have the usual displays and tours of the remodeled S.T. Olin Lab. Hope to see you!

Cornell Art Museum Exhibits Chemistry-related Show

The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art is featuring an exhibition entitled "Chemistry Imagined: A Collaboration of Art, Science, and Literature" from March 19 through June 13, 1993. The exhibit is the result of a collaboration between artist Vivian Torrence and Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann, the John A. Newman Professor of Physical Science.
Program notes written by Torrence and Hoffmann mention that the subject of the exhibition is "the magic of chemistry—its historical roots, the richness of activities of modern chemistry, the ways of knowing of this central science."
Torrence's collages and watercolors complement Hoffmann's poetry and essays and share such titles as "Greek Air," "The Devil Teaches Thermodynamics," and "The Philosopher's Stone."
Torrence developed her images from an examination of the history of chemistry and the activities of modem chemists, reacting to the way chemists think and the questions they ask. Hoffmann has responded to the same chemical content as well as to Torrence's images, drawing connections between them and chemistry itself, its meanings and history.
Hoffmann and Torrence began their collaboration in 1986 when both were in residence at the Djerassi Foundation in California. The project has been supported by a grant from the national Science Foundation under the Informal Science Education Program of the Directorate of Science and Engineering Education. It has also received funding from Cornell's Council of the Creative and Performing Arts.

Phlogiston

ACS Breakfast
If you live in the Chicago area or plan to attend the ACS Meeting in Chicago, please come to the "traditional" Cornell Chemistry breakfast at 7:45 a.m. on Tuesday, 24 August 1993 at a hotel to be announced later. Walter McCrone, AB '38, PhD '42, will give a brief talk entitled "Cornell Chemical Microscopy in Chicago."

Correction
An article in Issue 55 of the Cornell Chemistry Newsletter gave Steve Russo the wrong title: he is the director of organic chemistry laboratories. Stan Marcus remains the director of introductory chemistry laboratories, and Tom McCarrick is the director of physical and analytical chemistry laboratories. We apologize to Steve and Stan, who wondered if they were being called upon to switch jobs!

10

A Letter from the Chair

Now is the time to wrap up another academic year—the planning committee for this year's commencement ceremony just met again—but it's also the time for me to end five very interesting years as department chair. When I first thought about becoming chair, I felt a mild sense of dread, a premonition that the job had become too difficult in recent years. By now, I can report that the job is in fact manageable and sometimes even fun. There are two reasons for this: the superb support staff and the collegial spirit of the department.
The department office staff, the technical and educational support staff, and the maintenance group are absolutely wonderful to work with. Someone must have formulated a fundamental law of administration: that the path of responsibility gets defined in detail at the moment when something goes wrong. So it's a tribute to the effectiveness of the staff that I know only a little more about the intimate workings of the department than I did when I started. When things were supposed to get done, they were done and done well. Thanks to all of you for a great job.
Cornell Chemistry is a special environment Our visitors, whether short or long term, invariably comment on the department's congenial faculty. I don't know of another chemistry department in the country where faculty members cooperate so enthusiastically. It's important that we appreciate and support this unique sense of collegiality.
The last few years have seen some changes. First, our teaching responsibility has greatly expanded as the enrollments in our existing courses swelled. For example, the organic course, Chemistry 357-358, has now grown to well over 500 students—a class size that will either force us out of the friendly confines of Baker 200 or make us rethink how we teach the course. Even advanced courses such as physical chemistry have grown: Chemistry 389 will have some 150 budding chemists and chemical engineers next fall. We've also introduced new courses and these are growing: Chemistry 203, The World of Chemistry, now has an enrollment of 250-300, and we have great hopes for Jerry Meinwald's new course, The Language of Chemistry.
The way our research is organized has also changed. Perhaps more than any other science, chemistry has stressed the individual investigator model. But recent shifts in federal funding have led to larger units of organization and collaborative ways of working. In the last five years, department members have helped to launch the Polymer Outreach Program, the NSF-funded Graduate Traineeships in Inorganic Materials Chemistry, the Laboratory for Structure Based Drug Design, and several NIH-funded Training Grant Programs. Fortunately, our faculty tradition of cooperation fits naturally with these new funding opportunities.

Jon C. Clardy
We've seen changes in both our physical and human resources. The most dramatic change in the physical plant is the renovation that's been sweeping through the S.T. Olin wing of the building. During the last five years Dotse Sogah and David Zax have joined the department and Roger Loring has achieved tenure. The retirements of Fred McLafferty, George Morrison, and Harold Scheraga have not slowed their research programs but have left a hole in our teaching capabilities.
Is there anything left for the next department chair? Well there are just a few things that didn't get done. We need to repair and renovate Baker Laboratory, revise our curriculum, and hire several new people. I am confident the next chair will meet the challenges ahead and enjoy the quality of support I have so appreciated.

11

The Society of Cornell Chemists asks you to support the cost of printing and mailing this Newsletter with your voluntary annual dues of $10. Please make your 1992 check payable to "Cornell Chemistry" and mail it to The
Society of Cornell Chemists, G-03 Baker Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, Cornell University, Ithaca NY 14853-1301.
Cornell Chemistry is published by the Department of Chemistry at Cornell University. Jon Clardy, Chair; Earl Peters, Executive Director;
Donna Middleton, Contributing Editor; Kelly Strickland, Managing Editor & Design
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