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Published August 1993 | public
Journal Article Metadata-only

Electron Transfer Reactions in Chemistry: Theory and Experiment (Nobel Lecture)

Marcus, Rudolph A. ORCID icon

Abstract

Since the late 1940s, the field of electron transfer processes has grown enormously, both in chemistry and biology. The development of the field, experimentally and theoretically, as well as its relation to the study of other kinds of chemical reactions, presents to us an intriguing history, one in which many threads have been brought together. In this lecture, some history, recent trends, and my own involvement in this research are described.

Additional Information

© 1993 The Nobel Foundation. We thank the Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, for permission to print this lecture. Received: March 10, 1993. This article has not been consistently annotated. The relevant articles in the reference section have been arranged as follows: In [1] some of my important articles, largely from the 1956-1965 period, are listed. Some general references which review the overall literature are listed in [2], and several additional references for Table I and for the Figures in [3]. Classic texts on unimolecular reactions are given in [4]. I would like to acknowledge my many fellow researchers in the electron transfer field, notably Norman Sutin, with whom I have discussed so many of these matters for the past thirty or more years. I also thank my students and post-doctorals, whose presence was a constant source of stimulation to me, both in the electron transfer field and in the other fields of research which we have explored. In its earliest stage and for much of this period, my research was supported by the Office of Naval Research and also later by the National Science Foundation. The support of both agencies continues to this day, and I am very pleased to acknowledge its value and timeliness here. In my Nobel lecture, I concluded on a personal note with a slide of my great-uncle, Henrik Steen (né Markus), who came to Sweden in 1892. He received his doctorate in theology from the University of Uppsala in 1915, and was an educator and a prolific writer of pedagogic books. As I noted in the biographical sketch in Les Prix Nobel, he was one of my childhood idols. During my trip to Sweden to receive the Nobel prize, visiting with my Swedish relatives - some thirty or so of his descendants - has been an especially heartwarming experience for me and for my family. In a sense I feel that I owed him a debt, and that it is most fitting to acknowledge that debt here.

Additional details

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August 20, 2023
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October 20, 2023