Caltech President to Chair Panel on Energy

Caltech President Thomas E. Everhart has been appointed chairman of a new committee to advise Energy Secretary James D. Watkins on such issues as the development of a strategy to develop and allot national energy resources.

In another honor to a Caltech academician, Professor Emeritus John D. Roberts, known as one of the “primary intellectual forces” in organic chemistry, has been honored with the prestigious Robert A. Welch Award in Chemistry.

Watkins said that among the first issues the energy panel will consider are “a review of our interim report on the development of a National Energy Strategy and an analysis of ways to sustain the department’s national laboratory complex as an intellectual resource for the nation.”

The 28-member panel, which has been chartered as an independent advisory committee, includes three Nobel laureates as well as representatives of local and state government, nonprofit groups and the private sector.

The three Nobel laureates are Joshua Lederburg, president of Rockefeller University; Leon M. Lederman, director emeritus of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and Yuan T. Lee, professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley.

Everhart, an electrical engineer and applied physicist, has been the president of Caltech since September, 1987.

The $225,000 Welch award will be shared by Roberts, of Altadena, and Harvard University Professor William von Eggers.

“These two men have been primary intellectual forces (for) more than four decades . . . in the creation of modern physical organic chemistry,” said Jack S. Josey, president of the Texas-based Welch Foundation. He added the two had “profoundly influenced the ways in which the world of chemistry thinks about and teaches physical organic chemistry.”

The Welch Award is granted annually to scientists who have made important chemical research contributions that have a “significant, positive influence on mankind.” Besides the cash prize, the award includes a gold medallion and a certificate. The shared award will be presented at a formal banquet in honor of the two awardees in Houston on Oct. 22.

Roberts, 71, received his Ph.D. in chemistry from UCLA in 1944. He was a National Research Council Fellow at Harvard for a year and then joined the staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked as an associate professor. In 1953, he joined Caltech as professor of organic chemistry. He has lectured at 41 universities in seven countries.

Roberts is noted for his pioneering work in the field of nuclear magnetic resonance, a technique of looking at biochemical structures. It is used extensively in the medical field to “see” chemical reactions that could not have been seen with a simple X-ray.