乔治·怀特塞兹1939—

George McClelland Whitesides (born August 3, 1939) is an American chemist and professor of chemistry at Harvard University. He is best known for his work in the areas of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, organometallic chemistry, molecular self-assembly, soft lithography, microfabrication, microfluidics, and nanotechnology. A prolific author and patent holder who has received many awards, he received the highest Hirsch index rating of all living chemists in 2011.

Education

Whitesides attended secondary school at Phillips Academy and graduated in 1957. He received his A.B. degree from Harvard College in 1960 and earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1964, where he worked with John D. Roberts. At Caltech, Whitesides began working in organic chemistry. Whitesides' graduate work in organometallic chemistry used NMR spectroscopy and density matrices to study Grignard reagents. He used NMR spectroscopy to study rate of change of Grignard reagents and the structure of Grignard reagents in solution. He also studied spin–spin coupling in a variety of organic compounds, using density matrix calculations to examine the spin systems that NMR analyses detect.

Career

Research at MIT

Whitesides began his independent career as an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1963 and remained there until 1982. He continued his work with NMR spectroscopy and organometallic compounds, as well as working with polymers. Collaborations with biologists at MIT were an early influence informing his later work with biological systems. He is credited as having played a "pivotal role" in the development of the Corey–House–Posner–Whitesides reaction.

Research at Harvard

In 1982, Whitesides moved back to the Department of Chemistry at Harvard University, his alma mater, taking his laboratory with him. He was the Mallinckrodt Professor of Chemistry from 1982 to 2004. At Harvard, Whitesides has served as chairman of the Chemistry Department (1986–89) and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (1989–92).

Policy and public service

Beyond his scientific research, Whitesides is also active in public service. He was part of the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, which authored the National Academies' report Rising Above the Gathering Storm (2007). The report addressed U.S. competitiveness in science and technology. Two key challenges were identified as being essential to American scientific and engineering prowess: 1) creating high-quality jobs for Americans and 2) addressing the nation's need for clean, affordable, and reliable energy. The committee developed four areas of recommendations, with twenty specific proposals for implementable actions. Addressing human, financial, and informational issues, the report argued in favor of:

improving K–12 science and mathematics education, to ensure that there is a pool of talented individuals who can work in the sciences

Awards and achievements

Whitesides is the author of more than 1200 scientific articles and is listed as an inventor on at least 134 patents. He ranked 5th on Thomson ISI's list of the 1000 most cited chemists from 1981 to 1997, and 38th on the list from 2000 to 2010. According to the Hirsch index, a ranking which combines number of articles published and citations of those articles by others, he was the most influential living chemist in 2011.

Whitesides has co-founded over 12 companies with a combined market capitalization of over $20 billion. These companies include Genzyme, GelTex, Theravance, Surface Logix, Nano Terra, and WMR Biomedical. Whitesides has mentored more than 300 graduate students, postdocs, and visiting scholars. He serves on the editorial advisory boards of several scientific journals, including ACS Nano, Angewandte Chemie, Chemistry & Biology, and Small.

Personal life

Whitesides and his wife, Barbara, have two sons, George T. and Ben. George Thomas Whitesides was CEO of Virgin Galactic, a firm developing commercial space vehicles. In 2024, George was elected to Congress from 27th district of California after defeating three-term GOP incumbent, Mike Garcia. Ben Whitesides is lead singer and songwriter of The Joggers, a rock band based in Portland, Oregon.