Biographical Memoirs Volume 58 (1989) / Chapter Skim
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Oscar Knefler Rice
Oscar Knefler Rice
Pages 424-457
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From page 425... ...
The degree was awarded posthumously; he was cited as "very likely the most clistinguished chemist ever to have lived in North Carolina." ~ Oscar Rice was born in Chicago on February 12, 1903. His parents, Oscar Guiclo Rice and Thekla Knefler Rice, had been married only six months when his father ctiec!
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From page 426... ...
He studiecl energy exchange in inelastic molec2 From a letter by his wife, Hope Sherfy Rice, to their friend "sally" (the Reverend Ann Calvin Rogers-Witte) , written May 10, 1978, three days after Oscar Rice's death.
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From page 427... ...
Rice was to remain at Chapel Hill, although he traveled widely for conferences and lectures and took an occasional leave of absence. Just after the Seconc} World War, from ~ 946 to 1947, Rice took a position as Principal Chemist at the Oak Ricige National Laboratory.
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From page 428... ...
Those physical scientists who, like Oscar Rice, were born in the first half of the century's first decacle, reacher! scientific maturity along with the new quantum theory and wave mechanics.
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O Allen says: "Oscar hacI just recently published his epochal paper with Ramsperger on the theory of unimolecular reactions, which played an important role in the expansion of physical chemistry cluring what ~ later heard H
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~ P k - I characterizes} by activation and deactivation rate constants kit and k_~ ant]
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The issues raised by it—central to the study of regular versus stochastic behavior of complex mechanical systems are the object of much current research. When Rice left Berkeley and went to Caltech as a National Research Fellow, one of his first concerns (192Sb)
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From page 432... ...
Some of this work was apparently done during a temporary return to Berkeley (for his 1929 paper, "On the Quantum Mechanics of Chemical Reactions," has a Berkeley byline)
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From page 433... ...
His course in advanced inorganic chemistry at Harvard must have been one of the first in the country to give a systematic presentation of those ideas for young students; now such courses are stanciarct in the chemistry curriculum. Rice's influential book, Electronic Structure and Chemical Binding (1940a)
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From page 434... ...
Thus, although the true rate constants kf and kr are less than they are estimated to be by the equilibrium approximation, they deviate from the latter by identical factors, so that kf/kr, like kfq/kreq, is just k~k2k3/k4k5k6, which is the equilibrium constant for the reaction A = B This illustrates what Rice found to be a general phenom
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From page 435... ...
Impressive as were Rice's accomplishments in quantum collision theory, energy exchange, and chemical kinetics, they were nevertheless matched in depth and originality by his work on phase transitions and critical phenomena, the dominant interest of his later years. Some of the roots of the scaling ant!
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From page 436... ...
was also confirmed by experiment.~7 Rice's address, "Secondary Variables in Critical Phenomena," clelivered in 1970 when he received the American Chemical Society's Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry, was an extension of that same theme ~ ~ 972a)
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From page 437... ...
Oscar Rice's experimental studies of critical consolute points in liquid mixtures, including his careful cleterminations of the shapes of the two-phase coexistence curves, were fully as important for the clevelopment of our unclerstanding of critical phenomena as were his theoretical ideas. His aim in making those measurements was to test some controversial ideas then current about condensation and critical points.
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From page 438... ...
From Guggenheim's influential papery on the law of corresponding states, which appeared in 1945, it was wiclely known that as the temperature T approaches the critical temperature Tc, the difference in the densities of a pure liquid anti its equilibrium vapor vanishes proportionally to (Tc - Tap (via.
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From page 439... ...
occasion above to mention some of the honors that came to Oscar Rice, including the ACS Awarc! in Pure Chemistry and the ACS Peter Debye Award.
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From page 440... ...
Oscar Rice was famous for apparently sleeping through seminars and then asking perceptive and penetrating questions of the speakers. He was notorious for the clutter of his office, piled high with books and papers in seemingly random array- which clid not keep him from laying his hands instantly on whatever was sought.
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From page 441... ...
; they were contemporaries as graduate students in the Berkeley chemistry department; they both witnessed the development of quantum and statistical mechanics and applied them widely through physical chemistry; and they shared abiding interests in problems of chemical kinetics, liquid structure, and phase transitions. Although their public styles could hardly have been more different, their personal habits were much alike: "Henry .
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From page 442... ...
K Rice, on receiving the Southern Chemist Award of the Memphis section of the American Chemical Society, in New Orleans, 1961; quoted in the August 28, 1981 edition of the University Gazette (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
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From page 443... ...
Widom from 1952 to 1954. For helpful correspondence and conversations about Oscar Rice we are grateful above all to his wife, Hope Sherfy Rice, and to A
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From page 444... ...
Soc., 50:617-20. The quantum theory of quasi-unimolecular gas reactions.
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From page 445... ...
Rev., 10: 125-34. Energy exchange in unimolecular gas reactions.
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The homogeneous decomposition of diethyl ether at low pressures; with some remarks on the theory of unimolecular reactions.
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From page 447... ...
Phys., 4:242-51. On the thermodynamic properties of nitric oxide.
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From page 448... ...
The thermodynamic properties and potential energy of solid argon.
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From page 449... ...
Rev., 73:118893. 1949 Critical phenomena in binary liquid systems.
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Critical phenomena in the cyclohexaneaniline system.
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From page 451... ...
Phys., 22:382-85. The nature of higher-order phase transitions with application to liquid helium.
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Rev., 102:1416. Reversible flow phenomena and thermodynamic properties of liquid helium and the two-fluid hypothesis.
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From page 453... ...
Chem., 65:1925-29. On the relation between an equilibrium constant and the nonequilibrium rate constants of direct and reverse reactions.
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From page 454... ...
Soc., 86:3547-53. The thermodynamic properties and interatomic potential energy of solid argon.
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From page 455... ...
Secondary variables in critical phenomena, with application to A transition in liquid helium. In: Critical Phenomena in Alloys, Magnets, and Superconductors, ed.
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From page 456... ...
Critical Phenomena and Liquid Helium, National Technical Information Service AD Report no.
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