# Fame.am profile — machine-readable export
# Canonical URL: https://fame.am/person/william-lipscomb
# Generated: 2026-09-07T19:13:26.558Z

schema: https://schema.org/Person
url: "https://fame.am/person/william-lipscomb"
name: "William Lipscomb"
slug: "william-lipscomb"
description: "A chemist who decoded the structure of boranes — molecules so strange they broke the rules of bonding — then turned that geometric insight toward enzymes and won a Nobel for rewriting how atoms hold together."
tagline: "Nobel Prize-winning American inorganic and organic chemist"
image: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/William_n_lipscomb_jr.jpg"
gender: "male"
country:
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  isoCode: "US"
category:
  name: "Scientists"
  slug: "scientists"
profileType:
  name: "Scientist"
  slug: "scientist"
  entityType: "https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q39631"
birthDate: "1919-12-09"
deathDate: "2011-04-14"
livingStatus: "DECEASED"
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  momentum:             0
  historical:           22.71587866666667
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  profileCompleteness:  70
  trendDirection:       "FALLING"
ranks:
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  country:  null
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# bio (long form, separated for readability)
bio: |
  William Nunn Lipscomb Jr. was born December 9, 1919, and built his career at the intersection of theory and experiment. His work on boron chemistry revealed bonding patterns that classical models couldn't explain, earning him the Nobel Prize. He later applied nuclear magnetic resonance and theoretical methods to biochemistry, mapping how enzymes function at the molecular level. The scope ran from the exotic geometry of boranes to the mechanics of life itself. He died April 14, 2011, having spent decades proving that the smallest structures could bear the largest questions.