32 Facts About Henry Taube

Henry Taube's research focused on redox reactions, transition metals and the use of isotopically labeled compounds to follow reactions.

Henry Taube had over 600 publications including one book, and had mentored over 200 students during his career.

Henry Taube and his wife Mary had three children; his son Karl is an anthropologist at the University of California Riverside.

At 12, Henry Taube left his hometown and moved to Regina to attend Luther College where he completed high school.

Henry Taube attended the University of Saskatchewan, receiving his BSc in 1935 and his MSc in 1937.

Henry Taube moved to University of California, Berkeley, where he completed his PhD studies in 1940.

Henry Taube initially wanted to return to Canada to work, but did not receive a response when he applied for jobs at the major Canadian universities.

Henry Taube spent time at the University of Chicago as an assistant professor, associate professor and as a full professor from 1946 to 1961.

Henry Taube served as chair of the chemistry department in Chicago from 1956 to 1959, but did not enjoy administrative work.

Henry Taube became a Professor Emeritus at Stanford in 1986, but he continued to perform research until 2001, and visited his labs every day until his death in 2005.

Henry Taube used isotopically labeled oxygen-18 and radioactive chlorine to study these reactions.

Henry Taube was recognized by the American Chemical Society in 1955 for his isotope studies.

Henry Taube was unable to find much information in the textbooks available at the time.

Henry Taube realized that his work on the substitution of carbon in organic reactions could be related to inorganic complexes.

In 1952, Henry Taube published a key paper relating the rates of chemical reactions to electronic structure in Chemical Reviews.

Henry Taube researched ruthenium and osmium, both elements have a high capacity for back bonding.

When looking back on his research, Henry Taube explained that he sometimes had difficulty finding graduate students willing to work on electron transfer reactions, as they preferred to work on more "exciting" projects in his laboratory focusing on the effects of isotopic tracers and kinetics.

Henry Taube felt that a "primary flaw" with his correlation between electron configuration and ligand substitution was that it was described mainly in terms of valence bond theory, as crystal field theory and ligand field theory were not well established when he published his work in 1952.

Henry Taube was accepted as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1959.

In 1985, Henry Taube received the American Chemical Society's highest honor, the Priestley Medal, which is awarded to recognize "distinguished services to chemistry".

Henry Taube was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in 1949 and 1955.

Henry Taube was made an honorary member of the College of Chemists of Catalonia and Beleares, the Canadian Society of Chemists, and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Henry Taube was awarded an honorary fellowship in the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Indian Chemical Society and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1988.

Henry Taube received honorary degrees from many institutions, including the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Chicago, the Polytechnic Institute of New York, the State University of New York Stony Brook, the University of Guelph, Seton Hall University, the Lajos Kossuth University of Debrecen in Hungary and Northwestern University.

In 1981, Henry Taube became a founding member of the World Cultural Council.

Henry Taube published a book, Electron Transfer Reactions of Complex Ions in Solution in 1970.

Henry Taube's students have had faculty positions at many prestigious universities, including Cornell, Rutgers, Georgetown and Georgia Tech.

Henry Taube was born November 30,1915, in Neudorf, Saskatchewan, as the youngest of four boys.

Henry Taube's parents were ethnic Germans from Ukraine who had immigrated to Saskatchewan from Ukraine in 1911.

When he stopped his active research projects in 2001, Henry Taube continued to be available as a reviewer and consultant, but his main goal was "enjoying life".

Away from chemistry, Henry Taube had varied interests including gardening and classical music, mainly opera.

Henry Taube died at his home in Palo Alto, California on November 16,2005, at the age of 89.