MIT World Speakers

George M. Whitesides

George M. Whitesides and his Whitesides Research Group work in four areas: biochemistry, materials science, catalysis, and physical organic chemistry. The author of more than 70 publications, he wrote "Formulation of Monolayer Films by the Spontaneous Assembly of Organic Thiols from a Solution onto Gold”, which has been cited more than 1,400 times. Whitesides is also co-author, with Felice Frankel at MIT, of On the Surface of Things: Images of the Extraordinary in Science.

Whitesides received an A.B. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology. He was a member of the faculty of MIT from 1963 to 1982. He joined the Department of Chemistry at Harvard University in 1982, and was chairman from 1986 to 1989 and Mallinckrodt Professor of Chemistry from 1982 to 2004.

Whitesides is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Institute of Physics, among other organizations.