Onderzoek
Laudatio uitgesproken door prof. dr. R. Van Geen
FACULTEIT VAN DE TOEGEPASTE WETENSCHAPPEN
Laudatio van Prof. Dr. K. Mislow,
door Prof. Dr. R. Van Geen,
Decaan van de Faculteit
Dear Professor Mislow,
We appreciate very much that you found some spare time in your scientific activities to come to Brussels and it is a great honour for our University to have you today among us.
Allow me to introduce you to the non-chemist audience by giving a brief outline of your chemical career.
De eerste stap van Uw wetenschappelijke loopbaan ge beurde aan de Tulane University, met het behalen van Uw « B.S » degree in 1944.
Drie jaar later behaalde U de titel van Ph. D. aan het California Institute of Technology, onder de leiding van de vooraanstaande scheikundige Linus Pauling.
De jonge Ph. D. vervoegde dan de Faculteit Scheikunde van de University of New York, waar hij professor in de scheikunde werd tot 1964, het ogenblik waarop hij overging naar de Princeton University, waar hij aangeduid werd tot voorzitter van het departement scheikunde in 1968.
In the chemical literature we encounter your name hundreds of times, heading articles predominantly dealing with structural and mechanistic organic chemistry. Those reports of your chemical activities culminated in writing a book « Introduction to Stereochemistry » (1965), which threw a new light on several basic topics. Apparently you don't regard this anymore as established since you are revising it with newer ideas and rewriting it almost completely.
During the last ten years, you guided to completion over thirty postdoctoral studies. Your chemical concepts are further flourishing at different colleges and universities where your former pupils are lecturing now.
A scientist of your quality inevitably gets invited to join an Editorial Board of scientific journals: consequently we find you on the Board of Editors of the Journal of Organic Chemistry and on the Editorial Advisory Board of Tropics in Stereochemistry. To our great satisfaction you very recently accepted also to be an advisor for the Bulletin des Sociétés Chimiques Belges.
Your contacts with Belgium were strengthened when you were incumbent of the Solvay Chair of Chemistry at our University in 1972. Our scientists had then the occasion to profit of your chemical originality and phantasy during several fascinating lectures and discussions. We therefore dare to say you are a great scientist, most sincerely dedicated to chemistry.