Garland Lecture Features Chemist Geraldine Richmond

KINGSVILLE (March 27, 2007) — The 27th annual Fred M. Garland Memorial Lecture will be held at 4 p.m. Tuesday, April 3, in room 100 of the Biology Earth Sciences building at Texas A&M University-Kingsville.

Dr. Geraldine Richmond from the University of Oregon will give this year’s lecture entitled Going Nonlinear to Understand the Molecular Properties of Water Surfaces that Underlie Important Environmental Processes. Richmond is the Richard M. and Patricia H. Noyes Professor in the department of chemistry and Materials Science Institute at the University of Oregon.

She received her bachelor’s degree from Kansas State University and her doctorate in chemical physics from the University of California, Berkeley. Since beginning her academic career in 1980, her research using laser spectroscopy and molecular dynamics simulations has focused on understanding the chemistry and physics that occur at complex surfaces and interfaces that have relevance to important problems in energy production, environmental remediation, atmospheric chemistry and biomolecular surfaces.

Richmond is currently chair of the science advisory committee of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, associate editor of the Annual Review of Physical Chemistry, and a member of the hydrogen fuel cell technical advisory committee for the Office of the Secretary of the United States Department of Energy. She also is editorial advisory board member of Biointerphases, the Journal of Chemical Physics and Accounts of Chemical Research.

Richmond served as chair of the Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Board of the Department of Energy and served at the request of two Oregon governors on the State of Oregon Board of Higher Education. She is the founder and chair of the Committee on the Advancement of Women Chemists (COACh), a national organization assisting in the advancement of women faculty in the sciences.

She is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association of the Advancement of Science and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Richmond has been honored for her mentoring efforts by receiving the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science and Engineering Mentoring, the American Chemical Society Award for Encouraging Women in Chemical Sciences and the Council on Chemical Research Diversity Award.

The first Garland Lecture was held in 1981 to honor Dr. Fred M. Garland, who chaired the chemistry department at A&M-Kingsville from 1950 to 1975. Garland received the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation Award for distinguished teaching on the college level in 1977. In that same year, the Fred M. Garland Endowment Fund was created from the donations of former students and colleagues.

It was thanks to Garland’s persistence and leadership that the chemistry department first received certification from the American Chemical Society. The department has continued to earn certification up to the present.

The Garland Lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, call 361-593-2914.