Chemistry faculty connected with Manhattan Project to be honored

A special feature honoring WUSTL chemistry faculty in Arts & Sciences who participated in the Manhattan Project and an exhibit honoring women in chemistry will be included in the 46th Joseph W. Kennedy Memorial Lecture Sept. 8.

Robert J. Cava, Ph.D., professor and chair of Princeton University’s chemistry department, will present a talk on “Water, Triangles, and Superconductivity in Sodium Cobalt Oxides” at 4 p.m. in the Arts & Sciences Laboratory Science Building, Room 300.

After the lecture, at approximately 5:30 p.m., there will be a gala reception in recognition of the impact that WUSTL chemistry professors Lindsay Helmholz, Joseph Kennedy, David Lipkin, Herbert Potratz, Arthur Wahl and Samuel Weissman made upon the department after serving on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, N.M., during World War II.

Weissman and Wahl, now professors emeriti of chemistry, are the only two surviving members of the group.

The faculty of Arts & Sciences commissioned the painting of individual portraits by local artist Gilbert Early. An unveiling of these six portraits will be held during the reception, and each family will receive a small charcoal portrait.

Attendees will also have the opportunity to view the traveling exhibit from the Chemical Heritage Foundation, Her Lab in Your Life: Women in Chemistry. The exhibit, on view from Aug. 1-Sept. 23, is in the Rettner Gallery, also in the Arts & Sciences Laboratory Science Building.

Reservations for the lecture are required; the deadline is today. To make a reservation, contact Karen Klein at 935-6593 or karen@wustl.edu.