Bruce Gates Honored by ACS Catalysis
Chemical engineering distinguished professor Bruce Gates was honored by his students and colleagues on his 80th birthday with a special invited manuscript in ACS Catalysis highlighting his 50+ year career and accomplishments in the field.
The manuscript, written by ten of Gates’ former graduate students, is one of only a handful of its kind in the journal and is reserved for only the most distinguished researchers in catalysis. It details Gates’ contributions to the field in three different areas: supported metal clusters and atomically dispersed metal complexes, hydroprocessing reaction networks and catalysis, and strong acid catalysis.
“We take stock of the remarkable and ongoing career of Professor Bruce C. Gates,” it opens. “In the course of this work, he has addressed, and contributed to the solutions of some of the most significant and challenging problems in catalysis of the last half century.”
Gates is a well-known and highly respected figure in the field of catalysis and has been an active researcher since he was a graduate student at the University of Washington – Seattle in the mid-1960s. He joined UC Davis in 1992 after a 22-year career at the University of Delaware and two years at Chevron.
In that time, has contributed to more than 550 publications and five books and has mentored more than 70 postdoctoral scholars and visiting researchers, 24 M.S. students and 57 Ph.D. students, including CHE assistant professor Ron Runnebaum.
“His work is characterized by unrelenting intellectual rigor, focus on the most important problems in catalysis, use of the most powerful physical methods available, and careful writing of seminal manuscripts and reviews,” the article summary said.
Gates has received a long list of accolades from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and the American Chemical Society (ACS) and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2007.