Fireside Chat on March 7
The KNI kicked off its celebration with a very special fireside chat featuring Caltech alumnus (PhD '64) and Kavli Prize Laureate (2022) Dr. George M. Whitesides from Harvard University and President Thomas F. Rosenbaum. This event took place in Beckman Auditorium on Thursday, March 7, 2024.
George M. Whitesides was born August 3, 1939 in Louisville, KY. He received an A.B. degree from Harvard University in 1960 and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology (with J.D. Roberts) in 1964. He was a member of the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1963 to 1982. He joined the Department of Chemistry of Harvard University in 1982, and was Department Chairman 1986-89, Mallinckrodt Professor of Chemistry from 1982-2004 and the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor until 2023.
Dr. Whitesides and his collaborators were awarded the 2022 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience "for self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on solid substrates: molecular coatings to control surface properties".
Thomas F. Rosenbaum is the ninth president of the California Institute of Technology and Professor of Physics. He is an expert on the quantum mechanical nature of materials, conducting research at Bell Laboratories, IBM Watson Research Center, and the University of Chicago, where he served as Vice President for Research and for Argonne National Laboratory and then provost, before moving to Caltech in 2014. He received his bachelor's degree in physics with honors from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. He serves on the Society for Science & the Public's Board of Trustees, as General Member of the Aspen Center for Physics, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Los Angeles Program Committee.