12 Facts About Jacob Bigeleisen

Jacob Bigeleisen was born on May 2,1919, in Paterson, New Jersey.

Jacob Bigeleisen graduated in 1935 from Eastside High School, where he was one of less than 200 of 1,200 students who took a rigorous classical curriculum.

Jacob Bigeleisen's mother wanted him to go to college and a friend suggested that he study chemistry, noting that Paterson's dye companies that served the textile plants there would always need chemists.

Jacob Bigeleisen attended the University College of New York University in the Bronx, earned a master's degree in 1941 from Washington State College in Pullman, and was awarded a doctorate in 1943 from the University of California, Berkeley.

Jacob Bigeleisen became part of the Manhattan Project at Columbia University, where he worked on methods to achieve the separation of the uranium-235 from the more plentiful isotope uranium-238 needed to complete an atomic bomb using the enriched uranium.

The method of photochemistry that Jacob Bigeleisen researched did not lead to an effective method of separating the uranium isotopes, and gaseous diffusion and methods that took advantage of the electromagnetic properties of uranium proved to be more effective means of isotope separation.

Jacob Bigeleisen developed the basic theories of the effect of isotopic substitution on chemical equilibrium and on reaction rates.

Jacob Bigeleisen did research at Ohio State University and the University of Chicago after the war.

Jacob Bigeleisen was hired in 1948 by the Brookhaven National Laboratory, before moving to the University of Rochester in 1968 and to the State University at Stony Brook in 1978.

Jacob Bigeleisen was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1966, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1968.

Jacob Bigeleisen died at age 91 on August 7,2010, in Arlington, Virginia due to pulmonary disease.

Jacob Bigeleisen was survived by his wife, Grace, as well as by three sons and six grandchildren.