IN MEMORIAM
MICHAEL J. S. DEWAR
Michael J. S. Dewar died on October 10, 1997, in
Gainesville, Florida, at the age of 79. His beloved wife of fifty
years, Dr. Mary Williamson Dewar, a talented scholar in her own
right, preceded him in death in 1994. As suggested by their dear
friend, Nobel Laureate Sir D. H. R. Barton, the two of them probably
are now "united in a never-ending discussion on the intellectual
meaning of life." Two sons, C. E. Steuart Dewar and Robert
B. K. Dewar, and three grandchildren survive them.
Born in Ahmednagar, India, on September 24, 1918,
where his father was a civil servant for the Crown, Michael Dewar
was sent to England at the age of 8 to obtain his formal
education. After matriculating at Winchester, where one of his "fondest" memories
was the cold showers he took each morning, Michael received his
B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Oxford University (Balliol College),
the last in 1942. Considering his excellence in all academic
subjects, it is a somewhat amazing and very happy circumstance
that he chose organic chemistry for his career. As a young chemist
in an industrial chemistry position, Michael authored his first
highly influential book, The Electronic Theory of Organic
Chemistry. This remarkable monograph was the first to treat
organic chemistry in the context of molecular orbital theory,
which was in its infancy at the time. His genius was so overwhelmingly
apparent that he was appointed directly to the Chair in Chemistry
at Queen Mary College of the University of London (1951), bypassing
all of the customary junior positions. Some of us who knew him
later still have difficulty envisioning this intense, highly
creative, and research-oriented genius in the demanding administrative
role of Chairman, but he was indeed highly successful even in
this unlikely role.
Michael then shocked the world's chemical establishment,
especially that in Great Britain, by accepting the Kharasch Chair
at the University of Chicago in 1959. He never concealed his
amusement at having contributed so greatly to the "brain
drain" across the Atlantic. He again stunned the scientific
community in 1963 by moving to The University of Texas at Austin
to accept the very first Robert A. Welch research chair and to
exploit the new and "powerful" computer (less powerful
than most current personal computers) at our university. What
Michael and his research group did with this computer in developing
his semi-empirical molecular orbital methods is nothing short
of astounding. Michael was to spend the most productive and probably
the happiest years of his career here at the University of Texas.
His final move, to the University of Florida as Graduate Research
Professor, came in 1989. He retired in 1994 as Professor Emeritus
at Florida.
Michael's research career spanned a truly astonishing
six decades. He authored six books and about 600 research papers,
while training more than 180 collaborators. He broke onto the
international research scene in 1943 with a paper that is still
talked about with near reverence. In that paper he not only elucidated
the structure of a natural product (stipitatic acid) that had
confounded the experts in the study of natural products, but
he also conceived of an entirely new aromatic system (tropolone),
which would help found the new research area of non-benzenoid
aromaticity. He followed that triumph by proposing the intervention
of a p-complex in the benzidine rearrangement,
an insight that evolved into the Dewar-Chatt-Duncanson model
for such complexes involving transition metals.
It was in the decade of the 1950s that Michael
published his classic series of six nearly impenetrable but tremendously
important theoretical papers on perturbation molecular orbital
(PMO) theory-back-to-back in the Journal of the American Chemical
Society. The staid old Journal was by no means enamored
of theoretical chemistry and even less inclined to publish a
long series of papers. However, Michael was not accustomed to
even hearing, much less taking, "no" for
an answer, and he ultimately and probably predictably prevailed
in this issue. Then, shortly after coming to Austin, Michael
began to bring to fruition his dream of executing chemistry on
the computer with his now famous semi-empirical programs SCF-MO,
MINDO, MNDO, DEWAR-PI, AM1, AND SAM-1. Michael was especially
proud of the fact that whereas experimentalists at that time
could not detect transition states, these fascinating species
represented no major problem for his theoretical methods.
In reviewing his scientific career, in an article
entitled "Some Comments on A Semiempirical Life," (The
Chemical Intelligencer, January, 1997), Michael posed the
rhetorical question, "What has been my most important contribution
to Chemistry?" He answered it with "I was the first
organic chemist to really find out what quantum theory is about
and to use it to interpret chemical behavior." This is a
statement that stands unchallenged and characterizes his unique
role as a scientist who had an encyclopedic knowledge of organic
chemistry and the theoretical underpinnings of the subject.
It is a measure of Michael's status as a true
genius that he had such a tremendous impact on the application
of mathematical techniques to the understanding of molecular
properties. This accomplishment was in spite of the fact that
his formal training in mathematics left much to be desired, at
least in his opinion. Thus, as stated in his autobiography, A
Semiempirical Life, published in 1992, he found "the
lack of any instruction in mathematics both strange and deplorable," when
he was a student at Balliol College.
The honors accorded to Michael in his long and
distinguished career are far too numerous to mention here, but
include the Tilden and Robert Robinson Lectureships of the Chemical
Society (1954, and 1974, respectively), the Davy Medal of the
Royal Society of London (1982), the James Flack Norris Award
of the American Chemical Society (1984), the Tetrahedron Prize
for Creativity in Organic Chemistry (1989), and the American
Chemical Society Award for Computers in Chemistry (1994). It
is especially notable that he was a member of both the National
Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London, a status
achieved by extremely few scientists. In view of the significance
of his contributions to chemistry, it is regrettable that the
Nobel Prize was not to be among Michaelês many honors.
Michael will be remembered by many for his heroic
vision of chemistry, his sparkling intellect, and his good humor.
He will also be recalled as a scientist frequently involved in
controversy and as one who sometimes treated his adversaries
in what might kindly be described as a prickly manner-one writer
(NLB) of this resolution was himself occasionally a target of
Michael's aggressive criticism. One vignette that perfectly captures
this side of Michael was described by E. Thomas Strom, in the
January, 1998, issue of the Southwest Retort. In 1970,
Strom was in the audience for a talk by Dewar in which Michael
asserted that the Woodward-Hoffmann Rules were obviously foreshadowed
by work reported by M. G. Evans in the 1930s and thus were basically
derivative rather than innovative in nature. This remark caught
the attention of Roald Hoffmann, who was a prominent occupant
of a front-row seat for the talk. His was the first hand to shoot
up after the presentation, and he asked if the Rules were all
that obvious, why didn't Dewar himself devise them. Michael's
acerbic and succinct response was, "I suppose I should have,
really."
The many graduate students, postdoctoral fellows,
and visiting scholars who studied with Michael remember him in
yet a different way. They knew him as a person of unlimited and
uncontrollable energy, where this energy was provided by an inexhaustible
passion for and fascination with research that encompassed an
amazing variety of topics. Many of his co-workers were treated
to the scene of seeing Michael fling himself back in his office
chair and laughing as an interesting new result was presented
to him. With respect to such occasions, it was well known among
his colleagues that Michael never described research, whether
his or that of others, as brilliant or important. Rather, the
greatest compliment he would give to a piece of work was to describe
it as "amusing," or in rare cases, "extremely
amusing." All of his students learned to consider his use
of such terms as the highest possible compliment and strove to
merit this accolade. Clearly Michael saw research as an adventure
to enjoy and not as a vehicle to be used to elevate his own status.
His influence on the field of chemistry has been of major importance
and his scientific legacy will continue for years to come.
We would be remiss if we failed to mention yet
another aspect of Michael's persona: The social events that he
and Mary hosted and their unexcelled generosity to their guests.
Their cocktail parties were without peer, and one cannot forget
the sight of Michael cruising through their living room, a pitcher
of Manhattans in one hand and a pitcher of martinis in the other;
one's glass was never empty. Those guests who did not imbibe
alcohol were not left to fend for themselves, because sparkling
water and orange juice were always close at hand; they did, however,
have to serve themselves! And their dinner parties were memorable
for the quality of food and wine that was served to their fortunate
guests. Many of their acquaintances do not know that Michael
was a remarkably good chef, particularly when it came to Chinese
and Indian cuisine; indeed Michael developed a sufficient number
of customized recipes for Chinese dishes that a self-published
cookbook resulted. His accomplishments in the kitchen are probably
a reflection of his roots as an experimental organic chemist,
despite the fact that he forswore the laboratory bench for the
computer in the latter stages of his scientific career! As Michael
was wont to say, "Organic chemistry is the best preparation
for anything."
<signed>
Larry R. Faulkner, President
The University of Texas
at Austin
<signed>
John R. Durbin, Secretary
The General Faculty
This Memorial Resolution was prepared by a special
committee consisting of Professors John C. Gilbert (Chair), Allen
J. Bard, and Nathan L. Bauld.
