Professor Emeritus Jerome A. Berson, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA, passed away on January 13, 2017.
Professor Berson’s research focused on reaction mechanisms and the synthesis of molecules of theoretical interest, especially π-conjugated non-Kekulé molecules. He also wrote books on the history and philosophy of chemistry.
Jerome A. Berson studied chemistry at the City College of New York and Columbia University, both NY, USA. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1949 under the supervision of William von Eggers Doering. He was a postdoctoral research fellow with Robert Burns Woodward at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, from 1949 to 1950. Berson joined the University of Southern California in 1950, the University of Wisconsin in 1963, and Yale University in 1969. After his retirement, he remained at Yale as Sterling Professor Emeritus of Chemistry.
Among other honors, Berson received the James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry from the American Chemical Society (ACS) in 1978, the William H. Nichols Medal from the ACS in 1985, the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the ACS in 1992, and the Literature Prize of the German Chemical Industry Fund (Fonds der Chemischen Industrie, FCI) in 2000. He was a Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Selected Publications
- Molecules with Very Weak Bonds: The Edge of Covalency,
Jerome A. Berson,
Philos. Sci. 2008, 75, 947–957.
DOI: 10.1086/594537 - Kinetics, Thermodynamics, and the Problem of Selectivity: The Maturation of an Idea,
Jerome A. Berson,
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2006, 45, 4724–4729.
DOI: 10.1002/anie.200600229 - Non-Kekulé Molecules as Reactive Intermediates,
Jerome A. Berson,
in Reactive Intermediate Chemistry, R.A. Moss, M.S. Platz, and M. Jones, Jr. (Eds.), Wiley, 2004.
DOI: 10.1002/0471721492.ch5 - Chemical Discovery and the Logicians’ Program,
Jerome A. Berson,
Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, 2003.
ISBN: 978-3-527-30797-5 - Chemical Creativity: Ideas from the Work of Woodward, Hückel, Meerwein, and Others,
Jerome A. Berson,
Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, 1999.
ISBN: 978-3-527-29754-2 - Violations of Hund’s Rule in Non-Kekule Hydrocarbons: Theoretical Prediction and Experimental Verification,
Weston Thatcher Borden, Hiizu Iwamura, Jerome A. Berson,
Acc. Chem. Res. 1994, 27, 109–116.
DOI: 10.1021/ar00040a004 - The chemistry of trimethylenemethanes, a new class of biradical reactive intermediates,
Jerome A. Berson,
Acc. Chem. Res. 1978, 11, 446–453.
DOI: 10.1021/ar50132a003 - The Correlation of Solvent Effects on the Stereoselectivities of Diels-Alder Reactions by Means of Linear Free Energy Relationships. A New Empirical Measure of Solvent Polarity,
Jerome A. Berson, Zacharias Hamlet, William A. Mueller,
J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1962, 84, 297–304.
DOI: 10.1021/ja00861a033
