22 Facts About Richard Zare

Richard Zare is known for his enthusiasm for science and his exploration of new areas of research.

Richard Zare has mentored over 150 PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, of whom more than 49 are women or members of minorities.

Richard Zare is a strong advocate for women in science, and a fellow of the Association for Women in Science as of 2008.

Richard Zare earned his BA in chemistry and physics in 1961 and his PhD in 1964 in physical and analytical chemistry at Harvard University.

Richard Zare moved to the University of California, Berkeley to do PhD work with Dudley Herschbach, then returned 2 years later when Herschbach accepted a position at Harvard.

Richard Zare completed his PhD thesis, a theoretical analysis of Molecular fluorescence and photodissociation, with Herschbach at Harvard in 1964.

Richard Zare joined Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an assistant professor in 1965.

Richard Zare was named the Higgins Professor of Natural Science at Columbia in 1975.

In 1977 Richard Zare accepted a position as a full professor of chemistry at Stanford University, becoming the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science in 1987.

Richard Zare served as chair of the chemistry department from 2005 to 2011.

Richard Zare served on the National Science Board of the National Science Foundation from 1990 to 1996, and was the board's chair from 1994 to 1996.

Richard Zare is a member of the editorial advisory boards of other scientific publications, among them Chemistry World, Angewandte Chemie, Central European Journal of Chemistry, Journal of Separation Sciences and the Chinese Journal of Chromatography.

Richard Zare served on the Physical Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize from 2014 to 2016.

Richard Zare is chairman of the board of directors at Annual Reviews, Inc.

Richard Zare is well known for his research in laser chemistry, particularly the development of laser-induced fluorescence, which he has used to study reaction dynamics and analytical detection methods.

Early in his career, the question of whether laser-induced fluorescence could be used to study aflatoxins spurred Richard Zare to adapt LIF for use on liquids.

Richard Zare is one of the co-authors of a paper that appeared in Science in 1996, raising the possibility that a meteorite from Mars, ALH84001, contained traces of Martian life.

Richard Zare used two-step laser mass spectrometry, a technique that is particularly sensitive to organic molecules, to examine samples from the interior of the meteorite.

Richard Zare found that the 4.5-billion-year-old Martian meteorite, discovered in Antarctica, contained polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

Considerable controversy resulted, which Richard Zare felt disrupted his ongoing laboratory research.

Richard Zare has published several books, including a widely used textbook on the topic of angular momentum in quantum systems that is considered a classic for its explanations of angular momentum algebra and the fundamentals of molecular spectroscopy.

Richard Zare is an author or co-author of more than 1,000 peer-reviewed papers.