Profile of George Schatz

As a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology in the mid-1970s, George Schatz took classes given by Richard Feynman on particle physics and quantum electrodynamics covering the abstract and microcosmic basis of physical science. But, less than six years before, Schatz was a hayseed from Sackets Harbor, NY, a town of fewer than 1,000 people. Until college, he had never met anyone with a Ph.D. His transformation into a top theoretical chemist was propelled by his energy and curiosity, with only a few nudges from mentors who revealed to him what might be possible in life. Schatz is best known for his work on the theory of chemical reaction rates as well as his computational modeling of the optical properties of nanoparticles. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2007.

Schatz grew up in a rural environment where fertilizers and pesticides were common. The noxious fumes from the local paper plant were hard for him to ignore. “We all get exposed to chemicals,” he says. The ubiquity of chemistry triggered a decision in the 17-year-old Schatz. “Without ever having talked to anybody, just simply having read books, I decided that this was what I wanted to major in in college.”

He attended Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY, which was known for its science and engineering programs. “The good fortune for me was that there were very talented people at Clarkson willing to take me under their wing,” he says. Richard Partsch, still a professor at Clarkson, taught Schatz organic chemistry. “When I became a junior,” Schatz recalls, “he found me one day and said, ‘There are these undergraduate research programs that you can get involved with where you go visit a national lab for a semester. Maybe you'd want to try this.'” So in …