Leo Brewer
University of California, Berkeley
June 13, 1919 - February 22, 2005
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Scientific Discipline: Chemistry Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1959)
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The research achievements of physical chemist Leo Brewer covered an unusually wide range of subjects and employed a multitude of techniques. “It is probably fair to say that he has contributed significantly to our understanding of the chemistry of almost every element of the periodic table,” said colleague and former UC Berkeley vice chancellor Robert E. Connick. “[Brewer] created the field of modern high-temperature chemistry.”
Brewer’s primary research interests were indeed in high‐temperature thermodynamics, as well as materials science (including refractory containment materials), metallic phases, and metallic bonding theory (which incorporated the concepts of electron promotion and generalized acid‐base theory). Though fundamental in nature, his research had its practical applications as well, from nuclear reactors to space sciences.
Brewer was born in St. Louis, MO, spent his first 10 years in Youngstown, OH, and then, like so many others during the Great Depression, moved west with his family; they settled in Los Angeles in 1929. After receiving his B.S. in 1940 from the California Institute of Technology, Brewer did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1942, shortly after the United States entered World War II, he completed his doctorate—after only 28 months. His dissertation was on the effect of electrolytes on the kinetics of aqueous reactions.
Upon obtaining his Ph.D., Brewer was recruited by the wartime Manhattan Project (charged with developing the first nuclear weapon), with his assignment being to identify the high‐temperature properties of the newly discovered element plutonium. This work initiated Brewer’s career-long devotion to developing models for predicting the properties of materials. He began his more-than-50-year association with Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (later the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) in 1943 and was appointed assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at UC Berkeley In 1946. Brewer spent his academic career based at UC Berkeley, formally retiring in 1989.
In addition to his extensive research, Brewer was devoted to teaching, and he was a very popular teacher who took great interest in his students’ work. Gabor Somorjai, a chemistry professor at UC Berkeley who first arrived there in 1957 to do graduate work, recalls that Brewer’s course in Thermodynamics for first‐year grad students “was absolutely marvelous. Not only was he exceedingly knowledgeable, his enthusiasm lit up the subject. After taking this course, I had absolutely no doubt that I wanted to become a physical chemist. His teaching had a profound influence on me.”
