Richard Van Duyne, a chemist at Northwestern University and a pioneer in the development of techniques in analytical chemistry, died late last month (July 28) from pulmonary fibrosis. He was 73.
Van Duyne is best known for his work on surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), a technique that can generate high-resolution data about the structure of individual molecules. The effect was first described in 1974 by UK scientists, but Van Duyne’s explanation of the phenomenon in 1977, in a paper cited more than 4,600 times according to Google Scholar, set the stage for the technique to be developed into a powerful analytical tool with applications in multiple scientific fields.
“Professor Van Duyne contributed immeasurably to his discipline, to his department and to Northwestern,” Adrian Randolph, dean of Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, says in a statement. “He was a brilliant and amicable colleague, one whose research and teaching leaves ...
