View XML QR Code

Jack Dunitz Papers, 1927-2009

Overview of the Collection

Creator
Dunitz, Jack D.
Title
Jack Dunitz Papers
Dates
1927-2009 (inclusive)
Quantity
30 linear feet, (67 boxes), (42.9 megabytes)  :  Personal correspondence, institutional records, research notes, scientific articles and reprints, teaching materials, manuscripts and photographs.
Collection Number
MSS Dunitz
Summary
Jack Dunitz (b. 1923) is an internationally recognized crystallographer and expert on molecular structure. Over the course of his lengthy career - including more than three decades spent at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - Dunitz has established himself as a leading expert in his field. He is responsible for several major structural discoveries, the refinement of numerous crystallographic techniques, and the publication of nearly four-hundred scientific articles and reviews. The Dunitz Papers include personal correspondence, institutional records, research notes, scientific articles and reprints, teaching materials, manuscripts and photographs, the bulk of which date from 1941 to 2008.
Repository
Oregon State University Libraries, Special Collections and Archives Research Center
Special Collections and Archives Research Center
121 The Valley Library
Oregon State University
Corvallis OR
97331-4501
Telephone: 5417372075
Fax: 5417378674
scarc@oregonstate.edu
Access Restrictions
Restrictions on Access

Permission to examine The Jack Dunitz Papers will be granted to qualified researchers upon completion of an "Application for Use" form, and contingent upon the researcher's agreement to abide by the rules and policies governing collection use. See the Use of Collections page for more information

Languages
English, German
Sponsor
Return to Top

Biographical Note

Jack David Dunitz was born on March 29, 1923 in Glasgow, Scotland. He attended primary and secondary school in Glasgow, where he established himself as an intelligent child and a capable rugby player. It was during this time that he first became interested in chemistry, leading him to pursue a Bachelor's Degree in Chemistry at Glasgow University in 1940. Due to the strains of World War II, Dunitz's studies at Glasgow were condensed into three years and, following graduation, he entered the university's doctoral program under the supervision of John Monteath Robertson. Largely due to the pressures of Robertson's official responsibilities, Dunitz's experience as a doctoral student was primarily one of self-motivated learning and informal collaboration with other students. It was during this time that he began to work intensively with x-ray crystallography. He was assigned to the determination of the crystal structures of acetylenedicarboxylic acid dihydrate and diacetylenedicarboxylic acid dihydrate - a difficult and tedious process that took three years to complete.

At Glasgow Dunitz became familiar with the work of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, an internationally known crystallographer. Upon receiving his Ph.D., he took a position at Oxford as a postdoctoral researcher under Hodgkin's supervision. During his time in her laboratory, Dunitz met some of the most influential figures in twentieth century science including Sir Lawrence Bragg, John Desmond Bernal, and Max Perutz. There, he embarked on an extensive research program that included determining the structure of a calciferol derivative - a molecule that, at the time, was the most complex structure ever determined through means of x-ray crystallography - and the study of a tetraphenylcyclobutane structure. Through this work, he was introduced to Verner Schomaker who suggested that Dunitz begin gas-phase electron diffraction studies and helped to equip Dunitz with a research fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. After completing his work at Oxford, Dunitz left England for California where, in 1948, he began his work at Caltech. There, he met many of the scientists responsible for developing the field of modern structural chemistry including Linus Pauling and Robert Corey.

After three years at Caltech, Dunitz returned to Oxford where he learned theoretical chemistry from fellow researcher Leslie Orgel. It was during this period that Dunitz, Orgel, Sydney Brenner, and Dorothy Hodgkin visited Francis Crick and James Watson at Cambridge and became some of the first people to see the double helix model of DNA. After a year of work on ferrocene at Oxford, Dunitz returned to Caltech accompanied by his new bride, Barbara. While there, he met Alexander Rich and was recruited to set up a structural chemistry lab at the NIH Institute of Mental Health. Unfortunately, he quickly found himself uncomfortable at the NIH and returned to England, where he accepted a position as Senior Research Fellow at the Davy-Farraday Laboratory at The Royal Institution in London. Despite working under Sir Lawrence Bragg, who had dedicated himself to protein crystallography, Dunitz continued his collaboration with Leslie Orgel in the application of crystal-field theory.

In the early fall of 1957, Dunitz was offered an associate professorship at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology with an explicit order to create a first class x-ray crystallography group. He took the position in October 1957 and was promoted to Full Professor in 1964. Supported by the security of a permanent position and a great deal of autonomy, Dunitz began to apply the skills he had learned at Oxford and Caltech. He began work on synthetic ionophores, medium-ring compounds, relationships between crystal and chemical systems, phase transformations, and advanced crystallographic methods - a research program that he continued until his retirement in 1990. During his time in Zurich, he received extensive recognition from the international scientific community, resulting in awards, fellowships, and invitations of membership from the London Chemical Society, Harvard University, the Swiss Chemical Society, the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, and the American Crystallographic Association, among others. Dunitz has published nearly four hundred research articles and reviews as well as several texts on structural chemistry.

Return to Top

Historical Note

Return to Top

Content Description

The Jack Dunitz Papers include 30 linear feet of personal correspondence, institutional records, research notes, scientific articles and reprints, teaching materials, and manuscripts spanning his career from 1941-2008. In addition, 42.9 megabytes of born digital letters and manuscripts originally created using WriteNow word processing software have been converted to contemporary file types, printed out and organized into the collection's paper files. Materials are in English and German.

Return to Top

Use of the Collection

Restrictions on Use

Restrictions on Use

Portions of specified folders are restricted.

Preferred Citation

Preferred Citation

Courtesy of The Jack Dunitz Papers, Special Collections, Oregon State University Libraries

Return to Top

Administrative Information

Arrangement

The Jack Dunitz Papers have been organized into six series which are further arranged either alphabetically or chronologically, as appropriate. In addition to traditional archival materials, the collection includes a large volume of born digital word processing files, which have been printed out and inserted into the paper collection. An electronic repository of the born digital component of the collection in its original state is maintained on site.

Preservation Note

Physical quality of materials in The Jack Dunitz Papers ranges from good to very good.

Custodial History

Custodial History

All materials in The Jack Dunitz Papers were received by OSU Libraries Special Collections from Jack Dunitz via post between March 29, 2010 and May 17, 2010.

Acquisition Information

Acquisition Information

All physical materials (30 linear feet) were received by OSU Libraries Special Collections from Jack Dunitz via post on March 29, 2010.

All born digital materials (42.9 megabytes) were received by OSU Libraries Special Collections from Jack Dunitz via post on May 17, 2010.

Future Additions

Future Additions

Processing Note

Processing Note

Final arrangement by Chris Petersen, Reed Strickland and Trevor Sandgathe.

Bibliography

Books by Jack Dunitz
Dunitz, Jack . X-Ray Analysis and the Structure of Organic Molecules , First Edition. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1979 . Dunitz, Jack . X-Ray Analysis and the Structure of Organic Molecules , Second Edition. Basel, Switzerland: Verlag Helvetica Chimica Acta 1995 . Dunitz, Jack and Heilbronner, E. Reflections on Symmetry in Chemistry...and Elsewhere . Basel, Switzerland: Verlag Helvetica Chimica Acta; Weinheim, Germany: VCH 1993 . Dunitz, Jack and Bürgi, H.B. Structure Correlation , Volumes 1 & 2. Weinheim, Germany: VCH 1994 .

Related Materials

Related Materials

Related materials can be found in The Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers and A Liking for the Truth: Truth and Controversy in the Work of Linus Pauling event website, as hosted by the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections.

Separated Materials

Separated Materials

Not all correspondence was deposited with the collection and separated material may no longer be extant.

Return to Top

Detailed Description of the Collection

The following section contains a detailed listing of the materials in the collection.

Finding aid prepared by Chris Petersen, Ryan Wick, and Trevor Sandgathe.
2011

CC Attribution
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

About Creative Commons Licenses in Archives West