Photo: Bengt Oberger — File:John Polanyi 01 (cropped).jpg (Wikimedia Commons) · CC BY-SA 4.0
John Charles Polanyi
born 1929 · Canada, Hungary · Born 1900–1939
Nobel Chemistry 1986
Hungarian-born Canadian chemist who pioneered reaction dynamics, observing how molecules share energy as they react.
Nobel-winning work
Shared the prize with Dudley Herschbach and Yuan T. Lee for contributions to the dynamics of chemical elementary processes. Polanyi developed infrared chemiluminescence, letting him watch the vibrational and rotational energy of freshly formed reaction products and map how reactions release energy.
Fields
Related topics
Reaction rate, reaction order
Measuring how fast concentrations change, and how the empirical order of a reaction is read from its concentration–time behaviour.
Complex reaction mechanisms, catalysis
Building rate laws from elementary steps, steady-state and rate-determining-step approximations, chain reactions, and how catalysts open alternative pathways.