MENDOTA - Robert J. McMahon, Ph.D., formerly of Mendota, has been selected by the American Chemical Society (ACS) to receive a prestigious 2019 Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award.
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MENDOTA - Robert J. McMahon, Ph.D., formerly of Mendota, has been selected by the American Chemical Society (ACS) to receive a prestigious 2019 Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award.
The American Chemical Society chose McMahon for the award in recognition of his studies of the structures and reactivity patterns in foundational organic molecules. His research program explores basic aspects of organic chemistry in the context of harsh reaction conditions, which include extreme temperatures and electrical discharges, such as lightning strikes. These studies allow McMahon and his students to better understand the chemical processes that occur in natural environments, like flames, the atmosphere, and interstellar space.
The purpose of the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award is to recognize and encourage excellence in organic chemistry. The award consists of a $5,000 prize and a $40,000 unrestricted research grant. At the ACS National Meeting in San Diego, McMahon will deliver an award address at the Cope Award Symposium on Tuesday, August 27, 2019.
McMahon graduated as class valedictorian from Mendota High School in 1976. He received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1980, and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from UCLA in 1985. After serving as a postdoctoral research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, McMahon accepted a position on the faculty in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1988. There, he received a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation in 1989. He was promoted to full professor in 1997, named Helfaer Professor of Chemistry in 2007 and Irving Shain Chair in Chemistry in 2016.
McMahon served as the Chair of the Department of Chemistry at UW-Madison from 2013-2017. He was named an associate editor of the “Journal of Organic Chemistry” in 2000, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2003, and a Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2011. He has been a visiting scholar at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (2003) and a visiting fellow at the JILA Laboratory at the University of Colorado-Boulder (2010).
McMahon is the son of Betty and George McMahon, who currently reside at Wesley Willows in Rockford.
