During the afternoon of October 24, 2019, the Chemistry Department celebrated the 100th birthday (on December 9) of William Nunn Lipscomb, Jr., who is perhaps our most illustrious graduate. Lipscomb grew up in Lexington, graduated in 1941 from the University of Kentucky with a major in chemistry, and earned his Ph.D. from CalTech in 1946, where his mentor was Linus Pauling. After 13 years as a faculty member at the University of Minnesota Lipscomb was hired away in 1959 by Harvard University. In 1976 Lipscomb was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the structures and bonding of boranes, which are compounds composed of boron and hydrogen atoms. Later Lipscomb was equally well known for his pioneering studies of atomic-level structures of enzymes.
