Class Note 1963

Barry Sharpless received the 2019 Priestley Medal, the highest honor and lifetime achievement award at the American Chemical Society National Meeting & Exposition in Orlando, Florida. The award recognizes Barry’s distinguished services to chemistry, specifically “the invention of catalytic, asymmetric oxidation methods, the concept of click chemistry, and development of the copper-catalyzed version of the azide-acetylene cycloaddition reaction,” according to Chemistry Views, an international news service.

In his acceptance speech Barry traced his journey from precocious South Jersey fisherman and son of Philadelphia surgeon to Dartmouth premed, where a freshman skiing accident had him hobbling to the library and the embrace of molecules and the periodic table. He also credited the tutelage and encouragement from professor Thomas Spencer, who steered Barry to doctorate, post-doc, and faculty positions at Stanford, Harvard, and MIT and finally to Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, where Barry is a professor and in 2001 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the Sharpless Asymmetric Epoxidation and other work with wide applications in academic and industrial research, including heart medicines. Barry and Jan, a retired science writer, have children Hannah, Will, and Ike and three grandchildren.

Raccoons, deer, wild turkeys, bobcats, and possums do not usually come to mind when one thinks of Florida, but they are standard fare for Russ and Kathy Rothman, longtime residents of Monticello, about 15 miles from Tallahassee. A Florida native, Russ retired as chief of purchasing operations for the state’s department of management services. Prior to the public sector, Russ worked in management for Purdue Frederick pharmaceuticals outside Chicago and in 1978-79 for GTE International in Sidi Bel Abbes, Algeria, where his fluency from a Dartmouth year in France came in handy. The Rothmans’ daughter, Emily, is a junior at Florida State.

Bob Greenwood and spouse Dana Luebke, artistic directors of Sun.Ergos, the Calgary, Canada, theater and dance company, sponsored a visit and joint collaboration in Calgary with the Zendegi Theater Company of Tehran, Iran. The collaboration included workshops taught in English and Iranian and culminated in two public performances at cSpace of The Chairs, inspired by The Conference of the Birds, a 12th-century Persian poem. The uniting of the two dance companies was conceived following tours of Sun.Ergos in various parts of Iran, including the ancient site of Persepolis, in 2014 and 2017. A prominent participant in the Dartmouth Players, Bob earned an M.F.A. at the Yale University School of Drama with honors in acting, directing, and design.

For the 34th consecutive year, Mike and Jeanne Prince biked through the Connecticut River Valley to raise money for the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock and in honor of Jeanne’s brother, J.T., who succumbed to cancer in 2013. Mike did 100 miles and Jeanne, who credits Dartmouth-Hitchcock and Norris Cotton with her recovery from Merkel cell carcinoma diagnosed in 2011, added 50 miles of her own.

I regret to report the deaths of Hank Reynolds and Robert Lunden.Obituaries may be found in the magazine online edition.

—Harry Zlokower, 190 Amity St., Brooklyn, NY 11201; (917) 541-8162; harry@zlokower.com