Centenial Professor of Chemistry, Caltech
John Bercaw received his B. S. degree from North Carolina State University in 1967, his Ph. D. from the University of Michigan in 1971, and undertook postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago. He joined the faculty at the California Institute of Technology as an Arthur Amos Noyes Research Fellow in 1972, and in 1974 he joined the professorial ranks, becoming Professor of Chemistry in 1979. From 1985 to 1990 he was the Shell Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, and in 1993 he was named Centennial Professor of Chemistry. Bercaw has been a Seaborg Scholar at Los Alamos National Laboratory (2004), the Robert Burns Woodward Visiting Professor at Harvard University (1999), The George F. Baker Lecturer at Cornell University (1993), Visiting Miller Professor at the University of California, Berkeley (1990), and a Royal Society of Chemistry Guest Research Fellow at Oxford University (1989-1990). From 2009 to 2012 he was KFUPM Chair Professor at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals.
Bercaw consulted with Exxon for more than 20 years, and more recently with Dow, BP, and Calera. He has served on numerous panels for the Department of Energy and the National Research Council, and beginning in 1999 has been a member of the University of California, Office of the President’s Panels on Science and Technology for Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories. He is currently serving on the Science and Technology Committee for Los Alamos National Security and Lawrence Livermore National Security.
Bercaw was selected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1986) and was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1990) and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991). He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of Chicago in 2001. He has also been selected a Chemical Pioneer by the American Institute of Chemists (1999). He has received the American Chemical Society awards in Pure Chemistry (1980), for Organometallic Chemistry (1990), for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Inorganic Chemistry (1997), the George A. Olah Award for Hydrocarbon or Petroleum Chemistry (1999), and an Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (2000). He held the Sir Edward Frankland Prize Lectureship of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 1992. He has received the Basolo Medal (Northwestern, 2005), the Bailar Medal (University of Illinois, 2003), and the Tolman Medal (Southern California Section of the American Chemical Society, 2013).
His research interests are in synthetic, structural and mechanistic organotransition metal chemistry. Recent studies include catalysts for polymerization and oligomerization of olefins, investigations of hydrocarbon hydroxylation with transition metal complexes, and the development of catalysts for syngas conversion to chemicals. He has published over 270 peer-reviewed scientific articles.