Life and work

Richard Macy Noyes was born April 6, 1919 in Champaign, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

.
In 1959 Noyes became Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oregon

University of Oregon

-Colleges and schools:The University of Oregon is organized into eight schools and colleges—six professional schools and colleges, an Arts and Sciences College and an Honors College.- School of Architecture and Allied Arts :...

. His research area was focused on the kinetic studies of oscillating reactions. Together with Richard J. Field, Endre Koros he developed a model (FKN mechanism) in 1972 to describe the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction

Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction

A Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, or BZ reaction, is one of a class of reactions that serve as a classical example of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, resulting in the establishment of a nonlinear chemical oscillator. The only common element in these oscillating systems is the inclusion of bromine...

. In 1976, he was able to identify the reaction mechanism of the Bray-Liebhafsky reaction

Bray-Liebhafsky reaction

The Bray–Liebhafsky reaction is a chemical clock first described by William C. Bray in 1921 and the first oscillating reaction in a stirred homogeneous solution. He investigated the role of the iodate , the anion of iodic acid in the catalytic conversion of hydrogen peroxide to oxygen and water by...

.

Noyes has received numerous honors and awards. He received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955 and the Fulbright Research Fellowship in 1964. 1978 and 1979 he was awarded with the Alexander von Humboldt Senior American Scientist Award. It was elected in 1977 as a member of the National Academy of Sciences and in 1989 elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. During his career he published 190 scientific articles in various journals. He was also associate editor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry. On his 70th Birthday he was honored by the Journal with a Festschrift.
He died on November 25, 1997.

Works

• 1985 (with P. G. Bowers). Gas evolution oscillators. In Oscillations and Traveling Waves in Chemical Systems, eds. RJ Field and M. Burger, pp. 473–92. New York: Wiley-Interscience.
• 1986th Kinetics and mechanisms of complex reactions. In Investigations of Rates and Mechanisms of Reactions, vol. 6, part 1, ed C. F. Bernasconi, pp. 373–423. New York: John Wiley & Sons.