Physical organic chemistry in the 21st century, will it be recognizable?

Biography: Edward M. Arnett was born and raised in Philadelphia. He received his A. B., M. S., and Ph. D. (1947) from the University of Pennsylvania. After spending six years in industry and liberal arts teaching, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow with P. D. Bartlett's group at Harvard. In 1957 he moved to the University of Pittsburgh and from there to Duke University in 1980 where he held the R. J. Reynolds Chair of Chemistry until his retirement in 1992. Most of his work has lain in the detailed thermodynamic study of bond-making/breaking processes with particular reference to the stabilities of reactive intermediate carbocations, carbanions, and radicals. His group has made special use of reaction calorimetry and electrochemistry in solution to measure directly the heats of formation of these trivalent forms of carbon from neutral precursors. Other work has probed intermolecular forces by a variety of means including the use of chiral Langmuir-Blodgett monolayers to evaluate packing forces at interfaces. His work in physical organic chemistry has been recognized by a number of awards including the James Flack Norris Award, the ACS Award for Petroleum Chemistry, an Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, and election to the U. S. National Academy of Sciences.