George M. Whitesides

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 and academic career Education Whitesides attended secondary school at Phillips Andover 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. 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.