F. Albert Cotton
Award Name : National Medal of Science
Year of Award : 1982
Award for : Chemistry
Location : New Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Frank Albert Cotton was an
American chemist. He was the W.T. Doherty-Welch Foundation Chair and
Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Texas A&M University. He authored over
1700 scientific articlesd. Cotton was recognized for his research on the
chemistry of the transition metals. Frank Albert Cotton was born on April 9,
1930 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
His work emphasized both
electronic structure and chemical synthesis. He pioneered the study of multiple
bonding between transition metal atoms, starting with research on rhenium
halides, and in 1964 identified the quadruple bond in the Re2Cl2?8 ion. His
work soon focused on other metal-metal bonded species, elucidating the
structure of chromium(II) acetate. He received the National Medal Of Science in
1982. Cotton was a member of the National Academy of Sciences in the United
States, and the corresponding academies in Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France,
and Denmark, as well as the American Philosophical Society. He received
twenty-nine honorary doctorates. He died on February 20, 2007 (aged 76) in
College Station, TX.