Andrew Streitwieser is an American chemist known for his contributions to physical organic chemistry

Physical organic chemistry

Physical organic chemistry is the study of the interrelationships between structure and reactivity in organic molecules. It can be seen as the study of organic chemistry using tools of physical chemistry such as chemical equilibrium, chemical kinetics, thermochemistry, and quantum chemistry...

.

Streitwieser was born in 1927 in Buffalo, New York

Buffalo, New York

Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...

 and he grew up in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. He attended Columbia College and then Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 where he earned a PhD in the research group of William von Eggers Doering

William von Eggers Doering

William von Eggers Doering was a Professor Emeritus at Harvard University and the former Chair of its Chemistry Department...

 in 1952. He then was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of John D. Roberts

John D. Roberts

John Dombrowski Roberts is an American chemist. He has made contributions to the integration of physical chemistry, spectroscopy and organic chemistry for the understanding of chemical reaction rates....

 at MIT. He has been Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 since 1953.

Streitwieser was one of the pioneers of molecular orbital theory

Molecular orbital theory

In chemistry, molecular orbital theory is a method for determining molecular structure in which electrons are not assigned to individual bonds between atoms, but are treated as moving under the influence of the nuclei in the whole molecule...

 and his book Molecular Orbital Theory for Organic Chemists had a lasting impact on the field. His Chemical Reviews article titled "Solvolytic Displacement Reactions at Saturated Carbon" was influential in the field of physical organic chemistry. Streitwieser is also the author of the university textbooks Introduction to Organic Chemistry (ISBN 0139738509) and Progress in Physical Organic Chemistry (ISBN 0471833568) as well as the autobiography A Lifetime of Synergy With Theory and Experiment (ISBN 0841218366)

Streitwieser was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences

United States National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...

 in 1969 and is an American Chemical Society

American Chemical Society

The American Chemical Society is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 161,000 members at all degree-levels and in all fields of chemistry, chemical...

 Fellow. His is the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...

 (1968), the Arthur C. Cope

Arthur C. Cope

Arthur C. Cope was a highly successful and influential organic chemist and member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is credited with the development of several important chemical reactions which bear his name including the Cope elimination and the Cope rearrangement.Cope was born on June...

Scholar Award (1989), the Roger Adams Award (2009).