Clifford P. Kubiak

A leader in electron transfer and carbon dioxide chemistry, whose work defines the most detailed understanding of mechanisms of CO₂ reduction by artificial catalysts to selectively afford higher energy-content products and liquid fuels. Also well known for the development of coalescence of infrared vibrational spectra to study the kinetics of chemical processes at their extreme picosecond time limits in solution. His work has provided a series of breakthroughs in the theoretical understanding of electron transfer, including the roles of solvent dynamics, vibronic coupling, and electron transfer across hydrogen bonds. One of the early leading figures in chemical nanotechnology, he spearheaded the first studies of electronic conduction in molecular nanostructures. The assembly of gold nanoclusters linked by molecules enabled the observation by scanning probe microscopy of a Coulomb staircase phenomenon that was predicted by semi-classical tunneling theory. This provided the first realistic estimates of the electrical resistance of individual molecules.