William Lipscomb

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.