Robert W. Field

Robert Field was born June 13, 1944 in Wilmington, Delaware, the first of two children of Kay and Edmund Field. He majored in Chemistry at Amherst College (A. B. Magna cum laude, 1965, Doctor of Science honoris causas 1997). He obtained his graduate education at Harvard University where, supervised by William A. Klemperer, he gained his initial experience with multiple resonance spectroscopies and spectroscopic perturbations (Ph. D. and M. A., 1972). As a postdoc with Professors H.P. Broida and D.O. Harris at UCSB (1971-1974), he performed the first microwave-optical and optical-optical double resonance studies of diatomic molecules using tunable lasers and showed that spectroscopic perturbations can provide global insights into the electronic structure of the alkaline earth monoxides. Upon joining the MIT Chemistry faculty in 1974 (Assistant Professor 1974-1978, Associate Professor 1978-1982, Professor 1982-1999, Haslam and Dewey Professor of Chemistry 1999-present) he continued to develop new laser spectroscopic techniques including cw optically pumped molecular electronic lasers, modulated gain spectroscopy, and Stimulated Emission Pumping (SEP). His interest in spectroscopic perturbations led him to show that molecular electronic structure and dynamics can often be represented by a simple electrostatic perturbation of free-atomic-ion structures (ligand field theory). In collaboration with Professors James L. Kinsey and Robert J. Silbey he applied SEP to the study of highly excited vibrational levels of polyatomic molecules and obtained the first experimental evidence for quantum manifestations of classical chaos in an isolated molecule. He is a Fellow (1981) of the American Physical Society, and has been awarded the Herbert P. Broida Prize in 1980 and the Earle K. Plyler Prize in 1988. He is a Fellow (1994) of the Optical Society of America, and has been awarded the Ellis Lippincott Award in 1990 and the William F. Meggers Award in 1996, and the Coblentz Society¹s Bomem-Michelson Award in 2006. In addition, the 1990 Nobel Laureate Signature Award of the American Chemical Society cites Dr. Yongqin Chen and his co-preceptors (Professors Field and Kinsey) for SEP studies of acetylene. In 1998 he became a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His current research interests include: the development of advanced pattern recognition techniques to extract dynamical information (isomerization, intramolecular proton transfer, energy flow, and fluxional behavior) from highly excited vibrational spectra of polyatomic molecules; spectroscopic characterization of triplet states of small polyatomic molecules, especially the doorway-mediated mechanism of Intersystem Crossing; and the mechanisms of energy exchange between electronic and nuclear degrees of freedom, through the spectroscopic study of core-nonpenetrating Rydberg states of diatomic molecules. Robert Field has co-authored two monographs: Perturbations in the Spectra of Diatomic Molecules (1986); The Spectra and Dynamics of Diatomic Molecules (2004) and has co-edited monographs entitled Molecular Dynamics and Spectroscopy by Stimulated Emission Pumping (1995) and Nonlinear Spectroscopy for Molecular Structure Determination (1998). He has served on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy (1976-present), Journal of Physical Chemistry (1980-84), Journal of Chemical Physics (1986-1988), Chemical Physics Letters (1993-1995), and Annual Review of Physical Chemistry (1994-1999).

 Current research interests include laser spectroscopy, semi-empirical models of molecular electronic structure, Intramolecular Vibrational Redistribution, spectroscopic perturbations, advanced pattern recognition methods for spectroscopic characterization of large amplitude vibrational motions. Experiments utilize multiple resonance techniques based on cw and/or pulsed tunable lasers: Optical-Optical Double Resonance, Stimulated Emission Pumping, Modulated Gain Spectroscopy, Wavelength Selected Fluorescence Excitation Spectroscopy, Stark and Zeeman Quantum Beat Spectroscopy, Sideband Optical-Optical Double Resonance Zeeman Spectroscopy, Transient Gain and Transient Absorption Spectroscopy, Magnetic Rotation Spectroscopy, Frequency Modulation Spectroscopy, Time-Resolved Fourier Transform Spectroscopy, femtosecond pump/probe spectroscopy.