I-APS Awards: Josef Michl
Josef Michl is extremely deserving of the IAPS Award in
Photochemistry. As a former collaborator of Josef Michl, I
appreciate Josef's broadness of chemical knowledge. He is
truly a master chemist, not only of photochemistry, but in
many other areas as well. My writing of this congratulatory
letter has been made much more difficult by the appearance
of Josef Michl's autobiographical sketch in the November '92
issue of this Newsletter. Since Josef has already done such
an excellent job of summarizing the significant events in
his chemical life, I can only add some of my own personal
reflections of what makes the award winner such a deserving
recipient.
I first came to know of Josef's work through his now famous
article in Topics of Current Chemistry in which he
summarized his theoretical interpretation of the location of
potential energy minima of excited states, the locations of
funnels, and barriers on excited state surfaces (Topics Curr.
Chem., 1974, 46, 1). This work was cited in almost all
publications which I was reading at the time and, in my
opinion, still stands as the landmark work in this area.
When I was looking for a postdoctoral position a few years
later, I was very familiar with Josef's work on a variety of
matrix isolated species. One day, I happened to read a JACS
communication concerning the NMR spectra of matrix- isolated
species (JACS, 1978, 100, 8038) and I knew where I wanted to
go for my postdoctoral studies. What impressed me most about
Josef was the level of his scientific contributions in
comparison to his youthful age. A few months earlier, the
now infamous issue of JACS had appeared in which the Michl
group (and by implication, Josef) explained everything that
anyone could ever want to know about MCD from the front
cover to the back cover of a single issue (JACS, 1978, 100,
6801-6898). This confirmed my decision that Josef's group
was the place to postdoc. However, Josef must have
recognized something different about me upon my arrival in
Utah, since I never did a single experiment which related to
either low temperature NMR or MCD during my tenure with him.
All mentors utter expressions (i.e. "isms") to their
students that mean absolutely nothing to the mentor, but
make significant impacts upon the students. I would like to
repeat a couple of these expressions (which I will refer to
as Josefisms), because they reveal quite a bit about his
character. The first Josefism was heard shortly after my
arrival in his laboratory. Josef was congratulating one of
the group members about their recent research results to
which he said "That result did not arise from luck. Good
people make their own luck." I have repeated this expression
many times to my own students and colleagues because these
words are so perfect. These words certainly apply to Josef
Michl himself, as attested to by this award.
The next Josefism impacted me the most because of the work
that I and many others have had to do in his labs. One day,
Josef looked me directly in the eye and told me that "No
experiment should not be done just because it is impossible
to do." The implication of this Josefism was clear. I had to
do the experiment. Period. In order to convey the difficulty
of the experiment, I must give a short description of what
was required. Josef and I had contrasting theories
concerning the kinetic behavior of our (Our is used loosely
in this sentence) methylene-bridged 1,8-perinaphthyl
biradical. Resolution of whose theory was correct required
that the concentration of this biradicaloid species be
measured concurrently by both ESR and UV-vis absorption
methods. After a minimum of three months of work to assemble
the required experimental equipment (an experiment which
took all of my available time). I was finally able to steal
a UV-vis spectrometer from another group and move it into
the small room where the ESR was housed. The room was so
crowded that I had to crawl through the table carrying the
UV-vis spectrometer in order to operate the ESR spectrometer
and to move the cryostat from one instrument to the other.
Fortunately for me, the fire marshall could not see behind
the closed locked door which was necessitated because the
experiment had to be performed in the dark. The result of
the experiment was predictable in that Josef's theory was
the correct interpretation of the experimental data. My only
consolation was satisfaction that I could crawl through a
dark obstacle course for an entire weekend without wrecking
any equipment.
The final Josefism that I would like to relate concerns
Josef's thoroughness in checking all details of his
publications. Those who have worked in this group know that
all projects require only "two more experiments". When I
started my first (and what was to be my only) project, I was
told that there were only "two more experiments" to complete
the work necessary to begin writing the manuscript on the
above mentioned biradical. Josef asked me if I would be so
kind as to complete these "two experiments" for the previous
postdoctoral student whose time in the group had expired. In
return for the postdoctoral student's training, I would not
have my name on this paper. As a young and naive student, I
must have misunderstood what Josef meant by "two
experiments", since I made steady progress during my two
year tenure with Josef as evidenced by our reports at
National ACS Meetings, etc. After obtaining my current
position in 1983, I turned the project over to an aspiring
graduate student who has since earned his Ph.D. degree on
this project. Interestingly, this work has never been
published and Josef communicated to me within the past month
that there were only "two more experiments" to be done
before he will write up this work. This degree of
thoroughness makes his hundreds of publications even more
amazing, since I can personally attest that all manuscripts
emanating from his group receive the same degree of
thoroughness and internal review as this piece of work.
In closing, I must again cite Josef not only for his
photochemical work, but also for his multitude of other
work. As Editor-in-Chief of Chemical Reviews, he has made
the journal into his own image. He has been elected into the
United States Academy of Sciences. He was recently
well-toasted and well-roasted at a 50th birthday party
celebration while he was still at the University of Texas.
The IAPS award is only another in the long and continuing
string of awards that I am sure that Josef will receive in
his distinguished career.
John H. Penn
Department of Chemistry
West Virginia University
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