Friday, August 22, 2014

The Next POMs

This is to confirm that the dates of this year's POMs at McMaster are November 7, 8 and 9.

As indicated already, the contact person is Willie Leigh.  The meeting website will be located at …. Poms.McMaster.CA.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

John Warkentin (1931-2014)

As some of you know already, my long-time friend and M.Sc. supervisor, John Warkentin, died on March 30th. His family obituary is - HERE.
    John came from Grunthal, in southern Manitoba, and was a student at the University of Manitoba, in Winnipeg.  After completing his B.Sc., he worked on his M.Sc. with Gerry Dunn (1919-2013) there, and then went south to Iowa State College to work with George Hammond (1921-2005) for his Ph.D. degree.  When George moved to Caltech, John joined him briefly as a post-doc, and then had a longer post-doc stint with Paul Bartlett (1907-1997) at Harvard.  So, his credentials were pretty sound!
     In 1960 John went on staff at McMaster, and I worked with him during 1963-65. Later, he got tenure and promotion, and he remained at Mac until he retired in 1996, but he continued doing research for several years after. Over the years John carried out various responsibilities in his Department up to Chairman.  He also contributed to his profession - helping to organize symposia, refereeing, working as an Associate Editor for Can. J. Chem., and serving on NSERC Committees, at least once as chairman.
    John was a fine scientist, an excellent teacher, a mentor and role model, as well as a solid friend to many of us. He was widely known and respected for his research in the area of free radical and carbene chemistry.  Many of his mechanistic and synthetic studies involved studies of oxadiazolines which he showed to be versatile precursors of of diazo compounds (upon photolysis) and of carbenes (upon thermolysis), as depicted below.
    John and his students were frequent participants in POMs meetings, and they also talked about their research at national and international symposia.  His reputation overseas was such that he collaborated with several reputed chemists around the world, well as in Canada.

The upcoming 42nd POMs at McMaster in November will be an excellent time to remember John and his contributions to physical organic chemistry, to his Department, and to his profession.

Friday, August 8, 2014

Where's the next POMs?

The next POMs, our 42nd, is provisionally scheduled for November 14, 15 and 16, at McMaster University, but it may have to be moved to November 7, 8 and 9.  Please watch this space.
The principal organizer is Willie Leigh.