FRANK ROGOZIENSKI/WONDERFUL MACHINEOrganic chemist Phil Baran’s early days as a graduate student at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, were fraught with annoyance—but not of the scientific variety. “I was superfrustrated with the need to sleep,” he recalls. Baran bought a sleeping bag to keep in the lab, and on many nights, he curled up on a couch or sat on a chair in front of the fume hood to monitor a reaction instead of going home. “For me, it was like a religious experience coming here,” he adds.
Baran credits his talented high school chemistry teacher with igniting the spark of his interest in chemistry. Tom Codding let Baran experiment in the lab after school and, later, take chemicals home. Baran took core undergraduate classes at a community college near his Florida home and graduated with simultaneous high school and associate degrees.
Then, Baran enrolled at New York University (NYU), where he says he “basically lived in the lab” of David Schuster, whose team was trying to mimic a photosynthetic reaction center by joining fullerene and porphyrin compounds. Baran coauthored seven papers on their experiments. “I have never had anyone who worked as hard or accomplished so much,” says Schuster, adding that Baran “had enormous enthusiasm, enormous energy. I frequently found him asleep ...
