A Brief and Personal History of Heterogeneous Catalysis

报告人：Prof. Gary L. Haller（Yale University）

报告时间：2018年10月8日（星期一）下午15:00

报告地点：万博体育bet 江浦校区逸夫图书馆五楼报告厅

报告摘要：
“The first period of catalysis dates back to the dawn of civilization, at a date lost in time when mankind began to produce alcohol by fermentation.” Something similar can be said about acid catalysis, that is, it was surely used empirically without knowledge or concern about how or what was happening since “the dawn of civilization.” Thus, one can conjecture that enzyme and homogeneous catalysis were used early on, but not understood, by mankind. There is reason to believe heterogeneous catalysis occurred in nature but it cannot be said that heterogeneous catalysis was practiced by early mankind. There was more than one reaction where the first principle of catalysis was described before 1800, that is, the presence of a small amount of a substance is required for reaction but the substance is unaffected by the reaction. However, in 1835 J?ns Jacob Berzelius recognized this first principle across several different reactions and named the substance a “catalyst” and the process “catalysis” and unfortunately called the cause underlying the phenomena a “catalytic force.” While Berzelius did not intend that the latter terminology be an explanation of the group of phenomena, others interpreted it so. This caused Wilhelm Ostwald, Nobel Prize winner in chemistry in 1909 to lament “The employment of the concept of catalysis has served hitherto as an indication of scientific backwardness. The problem was that in the period after Berzelius’ recognition of a group of phenomena he called catalysis and before Ostwald’s 1884 study of the acid-catalyzed hydrolysis of methyl acetate which introduced kinetics, in the modern sense, into catalysis and tied the concept of catalytic activity to rate there was no concept of reaction rate, reaction reversibility or equilibrium. Burwell has entitled his short history “Heterogeneous Catalysis Before 1934, by which he implies that much of the history of heterogeneous catalysis after 1934 was focused on development of processes for the petroleum industry, e.g. the Houdry process for catalytic cracking, UOP acid catalyzed alkylation and Platforming processes, etc., and concepts such as the Langmuir and BET isotherms, the Taylor active sites, the Thiele Modulus of diffusion, etc. It will be recognized that this part of my history will become more personal and specific to the United States. The names of interest will pertain to scientists who worked in the US, although many were immigrants to the US. These names will include Hugh Taylor (England), Irving Langmuir, Vladimir Ipatieff (Russia), and his students Herman Pines (Poland) and Vladimir Haensel (Russia), Paul Emmett, Eugene Houdry (France), and Ernest Thiele.

报告人简介

个人简历：
Gary L. Haller是耶鲁大学工程与应用科学的Henry Prentiss Becton教授，在化学工程与化学系担任兼职教授。他于1966年在西北大学获得物理化学博士学位，在牛津大学做了一年博士后，于1967年加入耶鲁大学。在耶鲁大学50多年的工作中，他担任过系主任，工程委员会主席，工程与理学副教务长，Jonathan Edwards本科学院院长。他目前是耶鲁大学Henry Koerner荣誉学院的院长。
Haller教授曾多次访问过牛津大学，比利时天主教大学，阿根廷Universidad del Sur（联合国顾问），爱丁堡大学，慕尼黑技术大学（现任），纽约大学和国家标准（现为国家标准与技术研究所）。他担任过美国化学学会胶体和表面化学部主席，北美催化学会主席，催化期刊资深编辑以及多家期刊的编辑委员。

研究方向及成果：
Haller教授的研究涉及对非均相催化剂的分子理解。他的研究结合了催化剂合成的无机化学，光谱表征的物理化学，以及简单有机化学反应的动力学和机理研究。目前的研究方向集中在用于合成单壁碳纳米管的催化剂研究以及这些碳纳米管作为催化剂载体的新型催化反应的应用，例如水相重整（可再生能源的途径）和生物质精制。
Haller教授获得过Donald E. Fox化学讲师和杰出校友奖，并获得了耶鲁大学科学与工程协会的优秀服务奖。他获得过包括Lacey（加州理工学院），Harry Fair（俄克拉荷马大学），V. N. Ipatieff（西北大学）和Robert Burwell（北美催化学会）的大学讲师奖。他在University of Bahia Blanca, Université Catholique de Louvain, University of Edinburgh, the University of Paris VI, New York University, and the Technical University of Münich等学校担任过访问职位。他是15多家公司的行业顾问，发表了250多篇论文，1本书和8项工业专利。