Published by the MIT News Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.

Sharpless Endows UROP Fund

FAREWELL GIFT
Sharpless Endows New UROP Research Fund

A departing MIT chemistry professor and his wife have established an 
undergraduate research fellowship at MIT named for the professor's 
Dartmouth College research mentor. 

The creation of the $30,000 endowment by K. Barry Sharpless, Dartmouth 
Class of 1963, and his wife, Jan, honors Professor Thomas A. Spencer, an 
organic chemist on the Dartmouth faculty. The endowment, called the 
Thomas A. Spencer (Dartmouth College) Endowed Undergraduate Research 
Opportunities Program Fund, will provide annual organic chemistry 
research fellowships for one or more MIT undergraduates. The Spencer 
Fellowship will be administered by MIT's Undergraduate Research 
Opportunities Program (UROP). 

"Jan and I are doing this to say ÔThank you' to MIT and particularly to 
my organic chemistry colleagues here," said Professor Sharpless, who is 
leaving MIT this summer to assume the William M. Keck Professorship at 
the Research Institute of Scripps Clinic, La Jolla, California. "Setting 
up this fellowship seemed especially appropriate. Often there are few 
opportunities for young chemists to do research before graduate school, 
but my experiences as a Dartmouth junior doing research for Tom Spencer 
totally changed the direction of my life." 

Dr. Sharpless, whose work in oxidation methods has revolutionized 
organic chemistry, is widely known for the Sharpless Asymmetric 
Epoxidation, discovered in 1980 and described by Science magazine as 
"the most innovative reaction introduced into organic chemistry in 
modern times." He recently discovered the Asymmetric Dihydroxylation, a 
reaction predicted to have similar scope and utility. 

He received the BA degree from Dartmouth in 1963 and PhD from Stanford 
University in 1968. He joined the MIT faculty in 1970, and was elected 
to the National Academy of Sciences in 1985.