Profile of Michael D. Fayer
- Melissa Marino, Freelance Science Writer
In the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the glasses we may need to read these words, molecules are on the move. Even the hardest of materials shake, vibrate, bounce, and twist at the molecular level. These motions give our world form and function, imparting the physical properties we detect with our everyday senses. Using ultrafast spectroscopic methods, Michael D. Fayer, the David Mulvane Ehrsam and Edward Curtis Franklin Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University (Palo Alto, CA), has been working out these invisible movements for more than 30 years. In his Inaugural Article, Fayer, elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2007, probes the molecular dynamics of concentrated salt solutions to determine how high concentrations of charged particles affect the motions of the humble water molecule (1).
Electric Youth
A career in science seems inevitable to anyone growing up in a family like Fayer's. His father, William, an electrical engineer at the dawn of the modern electronics era, exuded excitement for science and technology and transmitted that fascination to his son.
“When I was very young, maybe 6 or 7, my father came home one day, and he held up this little thing in his hand and said, ‘This is a transistor. Soon there will be no more vacuum tubes!”' Fayer recalls. “This is how I grew up.”
Of course, his father was correct. Soon tiny transistors replaced vacuum tubes, leading to the downsized electronics of today. In fact, his father was always at the forefront of technology, making science and electronics his career as well as his hobby. With an electronics laboratory in the basement, Fayer always had electronic “toys”—oscilloscopes, signal generators, and soldering irons—with which to experiment.
Later, electronics gave way to pyrotechnics and photography, which introduced Fayer to the fascinating world of chemistry.
“With …
