Richard J. Saykally
University of California, Berkeley
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Primary Section: 14, Chemistry Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1999)
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Biosketch
Richard Saykally is the Class of 1932 Endowed Professor at the University of California-Berkeley. Born in Rhinelander, Wisconsin and educated at UW-Eau Claire and UW-Madison, Saykally has been a professor at the University of California, Berkeley since 1979. A co-author of over 400 publications that have been cited over 50,000 times (H index > 100), the recipient of over 78 honors and awards from 15 different countries, Saykally is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received the E.O. Lawrence Award in Chemistry from the U.S. Department of Energy, the Hinshelwood Lectureship from Oxford University, the Inaugural International Solvay Chair in Chemistry from the Solvay Institutes of Belgium, the Peter DeBye Award in Physical Chemistry from the ACS, the J.C. Bose Lectureship from IACS-Kolkata, and the Faraday Lectureship Prize from the UK Royal Society of Chemistry. He is a UC-Berkeley Distinguished Teacher, and has been active at the national level in science education. Over 150 students and postdocs have trained under his direction, many of whom hold prominent positions in academic, government, and industrial institutions.
Research Interests
I have concentrated mainly on the development of novel laser spectroscopy technologies (e.g., velocity modulation spectroscopy, terahertz vibration-rotation-tunneling spectroscopy, cavity ringdown spectroscopy), applying them to the study of ions, radicals, and clusters in the gas phase. Recent efforts have focused on the highly detailed study of small water clusters as a route to unraveling some of the famous "mysteries" of liquid water, of which spectroscopic determination of the water pair potential is an example. Other efforts include the study of carbon clusters and PAH molecules as to their possible roles in astrophysics, the development of "chemical imaging ultramicroscopy for the study of biological membranes," and the study of liquid/vapor interfaces.
