Fred Basolo was an American inorganic chemist

Inorganic chemistry

Inorganic chemistry is the branch of chemistry concerned with the properties and behavior of inorganic compounds. This field covers all chemical compounds except the myriad organic compounds , which are the subjects of organic chemistry...

. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...

 in 1943 with John C. Bailar. Basolo spent his entire professional career at Northwestern University

Northwestern University

Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

. He was a prolific contributor to the fields of coordination chemistry, organometallic

Organometallic chemistry

Organometallic chemistry is the study of chemical compounds containing bonds between carbon and a metal. Since many compounds without such bonds are chemically similar, an alternative may be compounds containing metal-element bonds of a largely covalent character...

, and bioinorganic chemistry

Bioinorganic chemistry

Bioinorganic chemistry is a field that examines the role of metals in biology. Bioinorganic chemistry includes the study of both natural phenomena such as the behavior of metalloproteins as well artificially introduced metals, including those that are non-essential, in medicine and toxicology...

, publishing over 400 papers. He supervised many Ph.D. students. With his colleague Ralph Pearson

Ralph Pearson

Ralph G. Pearson is a physical inorganic chemist best known for the development of the concept of hard and soft acids and bases ....

, he coauthored the influential monograph "Mechanisms of Inorganic Reactions", which illuminated the importance of mechanisms involving coordination compounds. This work, which integrated concepts from ligand field theory

Ligand field theory

Ligand field theory describes the bonding, orbital arrangement, and other characteristics of coordination complexes. It represents an application of molecular orbital theory to transition metal complexes. A transition metal ion has nine valence atomic orbitals, five d, one s, and three p orbitals...

 and 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...

, signaled a shift from a highly descriptive nature of coordination chemistry

Complex (chemistry)

In chemistry, a coordination complex or metal complex, is an atom or ion , bonded to a surrounding array of molecules or anions, that are in turn known as ligands or complexing agents...

 to a more quantitative science.

Among the many topics on which Basolo published were the indenyl effect

Indenyl effect

In organometallic chemistry, the indenyl effect refers to the enhanced rates of substitution displayed by η5-indenyl complexes vs the related η5-cyclopentadienyl complexes.-Mechanism:...

, the reaction of coordinated ligands, and synthetic models for myoglobin

Myoglobin

Myoglobin is an iron- and oxygen-binding protein found in the muscle tissue of vertebrates in general and in almost all mammals. It is related to hemoglobin, which is the iron- and oxygen-binding protein in blood, specifically in the red blood cells. The only time myoglobin is found in the...

.

A member of the 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...

, he was awarded the Priestley Medal

Priestley Medal

The Priestley Medal is the highest honor conferred by the American Chemical Society and is awarded for distinguished service in the field of chemistry. Established in 1922, the award is named after Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen who immigrated to the United States of America in 1794...

 and the George Pimentel Award in Chemical Education. He was president of the 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...

 in 1983. The same year, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

American Academy of Arts and Sciences

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...

.
His autobiography, From Coello to Inorganic Chemistry: A Lifetime of Reactions, was published in 2002.

External links

• http://www.cerm.unifi.it/FondSacc/basolo.html
• http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/85/i10/8510notw8.html
• http://www.chemheritage.org/exhibits/ex-oral-detail.asp?ID=91&Numb=1