September 15, 2016

---

MILWAUKEE — Marquette University's Chemistry Department will host a pair of lectures this fall featuring chemists discussing catalysts and alkenes.

Dr. Scott J. Miller, Irénée du Pont professor of chemistry at Yale University, will present the 2016 Habermann Lecture, "Searching for Selective Catalytic Reactions in Complex Molecular Environments," on Friday, Sept. 23, at 4 p.m.

Dr. Marsha I. Lester, the Edmund J. Kahn Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, will present the 2016 Nakamoto Lecture, "A New View on Tropospheric Chemistry of Alkenes," on Friday, Oct. 7, at 4 p.m.

Both lectures will be given in Room 121 of Marquette's Todd Wehr Chemistry Building.

Miller's research focuses on problems in catalysis. He was the chair of Yale's Chemistry Department from 2009-15, and received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. from Harvard.

Lester, the editor of The Journal of Chemical Physics, has developed innovative methods for stabilizing "entrance channel complexes" and reaction intermediates of environmental significance. Her group has used novel spectroscopic methods to characterize these previously uncharted regions of chemical reaction pathways.

About the Habermann Lecture

Eugene Habermann received a bachelor's of science degree in business administration from Marquette in 1958. He admired chemists who were well-trained and knew their art, and established the Habermann-Pfletschinger Chair in Chemistry at Marquette in honor of his parents.

About the Nakamoto Lecture

Kazuo Nakamoto, who became the first Wehr Professor of Chemistry at Marquette in 1969, directed the research of more than 85 graduate students and postdoctoral associates. He published more than 210 papers and 15 review articles. A pioneer in the use of metal isotopes to elucidate the involvement of metals in low frequency vibrations in metallic complexes, he authored the famous two-volume work on Infrared and Raman Spectra of Inorganic and Coordination Compounds.