Herschbach, Dudley Robert (1932-…), an American scientist, was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1986. He won the prize for his work with crossed molecular beams–high-speed streams of molecules or atoms that collide, providing information on their chemical behavior. Herschbach shared the prize with Yuan Lee of the United States and John Polanyi of Canada (see Lee, Yuan Tseh ; Polanyi, John Charles ).
Herschbach was born in San Jose, California. He earned a B.S. degree in 1954 and an M.S. degree in 1955, both at Stanford University in California. He obtained his Ph. D from Harvard University in 1958. In 1959, Herschbach began his work on molecular beams at the University of California, Berkeley. He fired beams of atoms so that they crossed and a proportion of the atoms collided. The energy of collision caused the atoms to react with each other, to radiate energy, or to behave in other ways without the complications introduced in normal reactions. Molecular-beam reactions werepure–that is, each atom interacted, if it interacted at all, with only one other atom. Molecular-beam experiments reveal aspects of the structure and behavior of atoms that conventional chemistry blurs.
In 1963, Herschbach became professor of chemistry at Harvard, where he continued experiments of this kind. However, his technique could use only atoms of certain elements. In 1967, Yuan Lee, a member of Herschbach’s team, used a new design of molecular-beam apparatus that could study a much wider range of atoms. Herschbach’s later work at Harvard also included other experimental and theoretical approaches to the behavior of matter.
