April 30, 2001
Public lecture and awards ceremony to honor chemist Joseph Bunnett
By Erica Klarreich
The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry will host the first annual Joseph. F.
Bunnett Research Organic Chemistry Lecture at 4 p.m. on Friday, May 4. The lecture,
which is supported by an endowment fund of private contributions, is in honor of
Professor Emeritus Joseph Bunnett.
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| Professor Emeritus Joseph F. Bunnett will be honored in multiple events on Friday, May 4. |
The lecture will be followed by a reception, which is free and open to the public. A gala banquet and awards ceremony will begin at 7 p.m.; admission is $25.
Joseph Bunnett is famous both for his esteemed work in the field of organic chemistry and for his dedication to the destruction of chemical weapons. Bunnett chairs the Committee on Chemical Weapons Destruction Technologies of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. He has also served on committees of the National Research Council, the Department of Defense, and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. He cochaired the Peer Review Committee of the Russian-American Joint Evaluation Program, which assisted Russia in destroying its chemical munitions.
Bunnett's research interests are in the kinetics, equilibria, and mechanisms of organic reactions. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was founding editor of Accounts of Chemical Research. He was twice a Fulbright Fellow and also earned a Guggenheim Fellowship. Bunnett has served as a visiting lecturer at universities in Asia, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South America, and North America. He is an honorary member of the Italian Chemical Society, the Pharmaceutical Society of Japan, and the Argentine Society for Research in Organic Chemistry.
Bernasconi has been a faculty member at UCSC since 1967. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship.
