212,599 profiles ranked

William Lipscomb

Nobel Prize-winning American inorganic and organic chemist · United States · Scientists · Lived 1919 to 2011 · aged 91

William Lipscomb is read about 45 times a day, in 59 languages.

A typical day, 30 days to 17 September 2026

The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 60 days, one point a day.

Something wrong?
Compare

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.

A life in dates

2011Died14 April 20111976Nobel Prize in ChemistryAwardRemsen AwardAward1973Peter Debye Award in Physical ChemistryAward1971Centenary PrizeAward1954Guggenheim FellowshipAward1919Born9 December 1919

Also in Deutsch

Photos 7

Awards

Nobel Prize in Chemistry1976
Remsen Award1976
Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry1973
Centenary Prize1971
Guggenheim Fellowship1954
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

About this person

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.

Country
United States
Category
Scientists
Type
Scientist
Status
deceased
Dates
Lived 1919 to 2011 · aged 91

Fame.am measures public visibility signals. It does not measure human value, talent, morality, or credibility.