WAISers: Henry Taube, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry..Obituary

WAISer Henry Taube, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, born in 1915, has died. He was a graduate student at Berkeley when I was there as a Commonwealth Fund Fellow (1937-39).� Like me, he has spent most of his professorial career at Stanford, The backyard of our Stanford home almost touches the backyard of his. A few years ago he wrote, but did not publish, an account of his life.� I have selected the section about his early years, which have a great human interest,� followed by a brief account of his scientific achievements. It is an intellectual version of the rags to riches story. He wrote:

My parents were born in Russia.� According to one account their forebears left Germany from near Danzig during the Empress Catherine’s reign.� Immigration of Germans was encouraged in the hope that it would lead to improvement of farm practices among the Muzhiks.� The family lived near the town of Rovno in northwestern Ukraine.� My parents were peasants and had no education apart from being taught to read High German by their Lutheran minister.� This was in preparation for confirmation.� The home language was Low German, my own first language.� Life for them under the Czar was miserable.� They escaped from Russia in 1911 or so as did many friends and relatives.� Most settled in the U.S., but my parents chose Canada.� The first stop was Winnipeg, Manitoba where my father worked as an unskilled laborer.� After two or three years they moved to Neudorf in Saskatchewan, where many of German extraction had already settled.� During the four years there my father worked as a farm hand and my mother cleaned house, washing floors for others who themselves were far from well to do.�

For the first two years after moving to Neudorf we lived in a rented sod hut where I was born in 1915.� By the time I was four my father had accumulated the means to rent a farm and we settled down in a two room shack near the town of Grenfell about thirty miles south, which was my home until at thirteen I left for Luther College.� It is located in the provincial capital, Regina.� I had the benefit of a one room school for my early education.� There were about two dozen pupils distributed sometimes over eight grades.� The classes were called up in turn to face the teacher’s desk and the recitations of the lessons could be heard throughout the room.� I listened to those of the classes ahead of me and advanced rapidly, skipping two grades.� Whatever advantage this may have been was partly lost because the teacher after I completed the eighth grade was not licensed to teach high school, so I was idle for a year, after which a qualified teacher was hired.�

None of my classmates after leaving Bradley School continued for a higher education and most stayed at home to help out on the farm.� My father was unusual in trying to provide for his children a better life than he had had.� We were four brothers, two born in Russia.� August, the older of the two and about fifteen years older than I was, left home soon after we moved from Neudorf to Grenfell.� He settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where we had relatives, crossing the border to the U.S. illegally, a rather common practice for new immigrants.� August had only a brief formal education in night school but became quite well read and prospered in the U.S.� While we were still in Neudorf, Edward, the second oldest, so impressed Mr. Dancy, the school teacher there, that the Dancys, who had no children of their own, persuaded my parents to let Edward be part of their family, but without formal adoption.� I only saw Edward during the summer holidays, but his visits in which he shared some of his learning greatly impressed me.� He was, as far as I know, the first in the history of our family to get a higher education and progressed to a Ph.D. in German Literature.� It was my father’s hope that I would become a Lutheran minister, not so much because he was deeply religious as that, in his experience, being a minister was as much as one could hope for in the way of a good life.� My father had planned that Albert, less than two years older than I was, also would go to the University, but in the stock market crash in 1929 he lost the little he had managed to save.� This happened at the start of my second year at Luther College.� After this my father was no longer able to pay for my stay there.� Mr. Paul Liefeld, the chemistry teacher, persuaded the school to appoint me as a helper in the laboratory.� This covered tuition and keep and, with some help from Edward, who by now had a university position - help which was continued for two years at the University of Saskatchewan at Saskatoon - I was able to continue my education.

Gerhard Herzberg was one of my teachers in my four years at Saskatoon.� Herzberg was the clearest lecturer I had had up to that time and perhaps the clearest ever.� I took two courses from him, one in atomic spectroscopy and one in nuclear physics, and did well in them.�� Professor John W. T. Spinks, who was advisor for my research to the Masters Degree, had studied with Herzberg in Germany and was responsible for his coming to Saskatoon.

�I had started out as a candidate for the ministry but when I was about fifteen I found that I couldn’t continue.� Even though the Ohio synod of the Lutheran Church was one of the more liberal branches, they then still preached a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis.� Even as a child I read everything that came my way and at some point came across Darwin’s teachings and they made sense to me, in spite of my trying hard to keep my faith.� I remember vividly the incident that changed the direction of my life.� I had gone into the library of Luther College, browsing as I often did, and picked up a book written, as I remember, by a Lutheran minister, dealing with evolution.� I even remember the blue cover of the book and particularly the illustration on the left hand margin of a left hand page, drawings of perhaps three dozen mice running down the page.� Each had a tail.� An experiment had been done to cut off the tails of successive generations of mice.� Despite this the mice still grew tails, hence the idea of evolution was shown to be nonsense.� I also remember a feeling of sadness as I put the book back on the shelf and decided I had to turn to something else.� When I told my father, bless him, he made no effort to dissuade me and simply expressed the hope that I would prosper at whatever I next chose to do.

I am among those who are rather slow in finding a career.� I had been introduced to chemistry and, as measured by grades, I was good at it and it was easy.� But it didn’t occupy my attention the way English Literature did.� My interest in literature was fostered by the physics teacher, Mr. Behrens.� He would come into the lecture room beaming and smiling, but to the detriment of my science career would talk mostly about poetry, not physics.� A particular favorite of his was Emily Dickinson, whose poems he would often recite.� It was a thrilling experience for me to see how much enjoyment he got out of the use of words put together well.� It made me feel that literature is a wonderful thing to devote one’s life to but as things worked out when I left Luther College for the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon I registered in chemistry.

I did do well in the chemistry courses in Saskatchewan but - and I hesitate to say this because the Department, particularly the Chairman, was good to me - I didn’t really get strongly motivated until beyond the Master’s Degree.� For work toward the Ph.D. degree I went to the University of California in Berkeley, where chemists such as G. N. Lewis, W. F. Giauque, J. H. Hildebrand, W. M. Latimer, and my Ph.D. mentor W. C. Bray were on the faculty and they were approachable and inspiring.� In those days what is called the “old boy network” still operated and G. N. Lewis played a role in recruiting graduate students at Berkeley.� He was Dean of the College of Chemistry, which meant that he had equal standing with the Dean of Arts and Sciences.� He was a scientist of the highest distinction and a powerful personality.� It was a condition of his accepting a position at Berkeley that the status of what was a department be elevated to that of a college.� Lewis got to know the future Chairman at Saskatchewan, Thorburger Thorvaldsen, when they were colleagues at MIT and because of this connection acted favorably on any recommendation which Thorvaldsen made for admission to graduate study in the College of Chemistry at Berkeley.� Thorvaldsen recommended me to Berkeley without my knowledge.�

I became deeply interested in chemistry soon after I came to Berkeley.� Just the general atmosphere of the college was conducive of this; chemistry was in the air.� When members of the faculty would meet, let’s say in the halls, the discussion would be about some seminar topic� that hadn’t been quite resolved or about a puzzling observation that someone had made, sometimes in the freshman laboratory.� What got to me early was not only their enthusiasm for the subject but their frankness in admitting the limits of their understanding and their willingness to learn from each other.� There was little pretense and they didn’t feel that they had to impress others.� At any rate, the fire was lit there quite early in my stay.

HENRY TAUBE’S MAJOR SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTIONS����

Henry Taube’s work has provided the basis for understanding the dynamic behavior of inorganic compounds - both of the transition metals and of the representative elements.� He has developed both experimental methods and mechanistic concepts.� Thus, his research has served as a foundation for much of the modern renaissance in inorganic chemistry.� His analysis of oxidation-reduction reactions is fundamental to many biological processes.� Most scientists who study biological redox reactions make use of Taube’s ideas - often without recognizing the origins of these concepts.� Taube’s major contributions are outlined in the following paragraphs, and we have attempted to place these in perspective.

Taube was the first to determine the hydration number of aqueous metal cations and the first to apply the following experimental techniques to this problem:� oxygen isotope labeling, NMR chemical shifts, and NMR paramagnetic shifts.� He was also the first to measure the equilibrium between inner and outer sphere forms of complex ions.� He thus laid the foundation for understanding the chemistry of metallic ions in aqueous media.

In his classic 1952 paper, Taube pointed out the correlation between ligand substitution rates and the electronic configuration of the metal for coordination compounds of the transition metals.� Almost thirty years later, this concept is still the dominant feature of the reaction chemistry of coordination compounds.� Over a period of about ten years (1952-63), Taube laid the foundation for mechanistic studies of substitution reactions involving transition metal complexes.� Examination of selected examples of his papers from this period illustrates his development of these fundamental methodologies.� For example, he was the first to demonstrate the rate law for substitution in a square planar complex - a process now recognized for a large and important class of chemical reactions.� He was the first to show how pressure effects could be used to diagnose substitution reactions involving metal complexes.� He first illustrated the product competition method as a technique for exploring substitution reactions of metal complexes, and he also discovered and elucidated the oxidative substitution reaction.

Taube is most renowned for his pioneering work on the mechanisms of oxidation-reduction reactions, especially those involving transition metal ions.� This area has enormous importance in energy transfer processes throughout biology.� Beginning in 1952, Taube first demonstrated the oxygen atom transfer path for an oxidation-reduction reaction in solution by employing isotopic tracers.� He then demonstrated the now classic “inner sphere” complex for electron transfer reactions of transition elements.� In this work, Taube made use of his earlier correlation of ligand exchange rates.� Subsequently, he demonstrated redox mechanisms which involve remote attack of the reductant on a conjugated ligand of the oxidant.� He followed this by illustrating the intermediate case:� intramolecular electron transfer in which the rate of transfer between the two metals through a common bridging ligand was measured.� He was the first to systematically prepare and characterize a mixed valence molecule whose reversible intramolecular electron transfer has helped to clarify our understanding of redox processes, and his work on mixed valence complexes initiated a large, rapidly growing field of chemistry.� Taube’s most recent work on electron transfer reactions is the first demonstration of stereoselectivity in “outer sphere” redox properties.