Chemistry Building 20th Anniversary Celebration & Randolph T. Major Symposium
 
Randolph T. Major Lecture Series
 
 
The Randolph T. Major Lecture Series
The Randolph T. Major Symposium was started by an endowment from Merck and Company, Inc. in 1976 following the death of Randolph T. Major. Dr. Randolph Major, a research professor at the University of Connecticut from 1970 to 1976, played a significant role in the development of research programs at Merck.

Over the last 40 years, the R. T. Major Symposium has been a signature event in the Department of Chemistry. In addition to featuring topics of interest in the traditional areas of chemistry, it has a strong interdisciplinary component. We regard this event as an opportunity to celebrate our academic and research efforts, and we encourage participation from colleagues in other disciplines.

 
 
Randolph T. Major
Randolph T. Major was born in Columbus, Ohio on December 23, 1901. He attended the University of Nebraska where he earned his A.B. in 1922 and M.S. in 1924. He received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Princeton University in 1927. He stayed on as an instructor and research associate at Princeton until 1930, when he joined Merck and Company, Inc., as Director of Pure Research.

For thirty-seven years Randolph Major played a significant role in the development of research programs at Merck. He held the positions of Director of Pure Research (1930-56), Vice President and Scientific Director (1947-53), Scientific Vice President (1953-56), and Scientific Advisor (1956-67, retired). He made important contributions to the establishment of commercial production of penicillin, hydrocortisone and various vitamins, and he was noted for both scientific vision and warm personable leadership. Randolph Major was a Research Professor at the University of Connecticut from 1970 until his death on November 1, 1976. He had previously served as Professor and Research Professor at the University of Virginia. At UConn he continued an active research program, directed undergraduate research projects, and shared ideas and interests with faculty and students alike.

Following his death in 1976, Merck and Company, Inc., presented the University of Connecticut Foundation a grant to endow an annual Lectureship in Chemistry in his memory. The renowned chemists who have participated in this Memorial Lecture Series honor the name and ideals of Randolph T. Major.
 
 
About the Guest Lecturers
 
Marinella Mazzanti
Head of the Group of Coordinator Chemistry, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Marinella Mazzanti was born in Vinci, Italy, quite a longtime after Leonardo. She obtained a Master’s degree from the University of Pisa in 1985 after spending a year in Columbia University (NY). She obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Lausanne in 1990 under the guidance of Carlo Floriani. Her Ph.D. work focused on Schiff base complexes of low valent vanadium, and small molecule activation. Shortly after, she moved to the University of California, Berkeley, where she worked as a post-doctoral fellow in the group of W. Armstrong before moving to the University of California, Davis, where she worked on cobalt and copper chemistry with Alan Balch. In 1994 she was awarded a two year Marie-Curie fellowship to join the group of Jean Claude Marchon where she worked on the design of metalloporphyrin catalysts at the French National Laboratory, CEA, in Grenoble.

In 1996 she was hired as a research scientist and team leader at the CEA Grenoble where she started her independent research. Her research activities were centered on f element coordination and supramolecular chemistry with application in the development of luminescent and magnetic probes, lanthanide/actinide separation in spent nuclear fuels, molecular magnetism, and small molecule activation.

In September 2014 she joined the EPFL and founded the Group of Coordination Chemistry. She will continue to develop the chemistry of f and d block metals with particular focus on redox reactivity, supramolecular chemistry and small molecule activation.

She is a member of the Editorial Board of Dalton Transactions.
 
 
 
Kenneth N. Raymond 
Chancellor’s Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Professor Raymond has had a prolific career in the area of coordination chemistry. His interests are both in the design, synthesis, and characterization of coordination complexes, and also the investigation of metal coordination in biological systems. He has served as Director of the Seaborg Center in the Chemical Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and is currently Chancellor's Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley.