Norman Sutin: A personal tribute

Abstract

It is a pleasure to participate in this issue honoring a longtime friend and colleague, Norman Sutin. In the early days of electron transfer almost 50 years ago, Norman pioneered the application of fast stopped-flow techniques to the study of electron-transfer reactions, determining the effect of the driving force, -ΔG°, and reorganization energies on the rates of electron-transfer reactions, and extending Henry Taube's innersphere atom-transfer mechanism to fast reactions. Later, Norman initiated the use of "Rubpy", tris(2,2'-bipyridine)ruthenium(II), to studies of photoinduced electron transfer by showing that its excited state can be quenched by electron transfer. Today, "Rubpy" is a central player in the quest to construct solar conversion devices to split water, and a Google search on tris- (2,2'-bipyridine)ruthenium(II) returns almost 100,000 hits!

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