Daniel Kivelson, 73; Chemistry Professor at UCLA, Molecule Expert

Daniel Kivelson, 73, a UCLA chemistry professor and administrator who studied molecular movement in liquids, died Wednesday at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine of cancer.

The New York native earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard, and was awarded Guggenheim, Sloan and Fulbright fellowships. He taught briefly at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before moving to UCLA in 1955.

Kivelson headed the chemistry department from 1975 to 1978 and was also chairman of the UCLA Academic Senate from 1979 to 1980.

He spent half a century researching the way molecules move in liquids, explaining the movements as “translations” with a constant exchange of energy between types of motions.

With his wife, Margaret, a UCLA professor of geophysics and planetary physics, Kivelson collected Turkoman rugs. They often lent pieces from their collection for displays at the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C., and most recently the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

In 1975, the couple and their son, Steven, a UCLA physics professor, jointly wrote “Introduction to Turkoman Weaving” for the catalog of a major rug exhibit.