Photo credit: U.S. Department of Energy — File:Rudolph A. Marcus at the blackboard.jpg (Wikimedia Commons) · Public domain
Rudolph A. Marcus
1923–2024 · Canada, United States · 20th century
Nobel Chemistry 1992
Canadian-born theoretical chemist whose electron-transfer theory explains redox processes from corrosion to photosynthesis.
Nobel Prize work
Honoured for his theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems. Marcus theory predicts reaction rates from molecular reorganisation energy and driving force, famously foreseeing the 'inverted region' where faster-driving reactions paradoxically slow down — later confirmed experimentally.
Fields
Related topics
Galvanic cells, electrode potentials, Nernst equation
How a spontaneous redox reaction can drive electrons through a wire, and how the voltage is predicted.
Transition state theory
Reaction rates as a passage over a saddle point: the activated complex, the Eyring equation, activation thermodynamics (ΔG‡, ΔH‡, ΔS‡), and where the theory fails — recrossing, tunnelling and dynamics.