Henry Eyring

Henry Eyring (February 20, 1901 – December 26, 1981) was a Mexico-born United States theoretical chemist whose primary contribution was in the study of chemical reaction rates and intermediates. Eyring developed the Absolute Rate Theory or Transition state theory of chemical reactions, connecting the fields of chemistry and physics through atomic theory, quantum theory, and statistical mechanics. History Eyring, a third-generation member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), was reared on a cattle ranch in Colonia Juárez, Chihuahua, a Mormon colony, for the first 11 years of his life. His father, Edward Christian Eyring, practiced plural marriage; Edward married Caroline Romney (1893) and her sister Emma Romney (1903), both daughters of Miles Park Romney, the great-grandfather of Mitt Romney. In July 1912, the Eyrings and about 4,200 other immigrants were driven out of Mexico by violent insurgents during the Mexican Revolution and moved to El Paso, Texas. After living in El Paso for approximately one year, the Eyrings relocated to Pima, Arizona, where he completed high school and showed a special aptitude for mathematics and science. He also studied at Gila Academy in Thatcher, Arizona, now Eastern Arizona College. One of the pillars at the front of the main building still bears his name, along with that of his sister Camilla's husband, Spencer W. Kimball, later president of the LDS Church. Eyring earned a BS in mining engineering at the University of Arizona by working in a copper mine. He then received a fellowship from the US Bureau of Mines fellowship and earned his M.Sc. in metallurgy. Having seen the high rates of accidents in the mines, and breathed sulfur fumes from blast furnaces at a smelter, he chose to do his Ph.D. in chemistry. He pursued and received his doctoral degree in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1927 for a thesis on A Comparison of the Ionization by, and Stopping Power for, Alpha Particles of Elements and Compounds.