For the American actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

, see Dan Kemp

Dan Kemp

Daniel "Dan" Kemp was an American actor best known for his guest-starring roles in several television westerns between 1969 and 1971....

.

Daniel Schaeffer Kemp (born October 20, 1936) is an American chemist

Chemist

A chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...

. He is a professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 and is best known for being the author of a widely-used organic chemistry

Organic chemistry

Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the scientific study of the structure, properties, composition, reactions, and preparation of carbon-based compounds, hydrocarbons, and their derivatives...

 textbook.

Background

Kemp was born in Portland

Portland, Oregon

Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

, Oregon

Oregon

Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...

. He received his Bachelor of Arts

Bachelor of Arts

A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 in chemistry from Reed College

Reed College

Reed College is a private, independent, liberal arts college located in southeast Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus located in Portland's Eastmoreland neighborhood, featuring architecture based on the Tudor-Gothic style, and a forested canyon wilderness...

 in 1958 and his Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 from Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 in 1964 where he was elected to the Harvard Society of Fellows

Harvard Society of Fellows

The Harvard Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginning of their careers by Harvard University for extraordinary scholarly potential, upon whom distinctive academic and intellectual opportunities are bestowed in order to foster their individual growth and intellectual...

.

Awards and honors

• 1993 — Everett Moore Baker Memorial Award
• 1997 — Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award 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...
  
  
• 2000 — Ralph F. Hirschmann Award in Peptide Chemistry of the American Chemical Society

Quotes

• "[Favorable equilibrium combined with high energy barrier] is generally the case with high explosives. Explosives without this barrier are not likely to store well. A company which makes these is likely to go out of business unexpectedly."

• "For those of you who chose chemistry because of an excess of testosterone... Well, that's why I got in: the thought that I could make gunpowder. And some of us did survive. And some of us ended up teaching on university faculties. I won't even tell you what happened to those of us who didn't."

• "It's early in the term - you should be able to observe this before the mental rot sets in."

• "The word alcohol comes from 'cohol' - it's related to a pigment you use around the eyelids to get a sense of enhanced attraction or beauty... or late nights or something."

• "You take a monkey (who is third in the social order)... inject him with testosterone... give him a ton... enough to grow antlers and a beard...you'll find that he's still subservient to monkeys one and two, but he has become a total bastard to four and five."

External links

• Profile of Prof. Kemp on the MIT Chemistry Department website
• MIT Chemistry Department website
• Wisdom of the Professors — the source of the Kemp quotes shown above.