Memoir

Don Yost

California Institute of Technology

October 30, 1893 - March 27, 1977


Membership Type:
Member (elected 1944)

Don Yost’s research at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he spent his entire professional career, covered a broad range of topics in physical chemistry and supported the United States effort during World War II.

Yost earned his bachelors degree in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and worked briefly at the University of Utah before receiving a research fellowship to study at Caltech. He completed his PhD in chemistry two years later and subsequently began teaching. Yost left Caltech for a year to continue his research in Sweden and Germany under a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship.

After the start of World War II, Yost accepted a commission as lieutenant commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve and began to pursue research on chemical warfare at Caltech, for which he eventually received a Presidential Certificate of Merit. He ceased this work in 1943 and focused on writing books about inorganic chemistry and the rare earth compounds.

Yost joined the Manhattan Project in 1945. After the war ended, he returned to basic research at Caltech on topics such as nuclear magnetic resonance, electron spin resonance, and the microwave spectroscopy of gasses. He retired from Caltech in 1964 and turned his attention to the study of mathematics.

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