Gerhard Herzberg (1904-1999)

Awarded the Prize “for his contributions to the knowledge of electronic structure geometry of molecules, particularly free radicals.”

Canadian spectroscopist. Herzberg was born in Hamburg on December 25, 1904. In 1928 he obtained his doctorate at the Darmstadt Institute of Technology he taught there from 1930 till 1935. After he emigrated to Canada, he was Research Professor of Physics at the University of Saskatchewan from 1935 until 1945. He returned to Canada in 1948 after spending three years as a professor of Spectroscopy at the Yerkes Observatory, Wisconsin. From 1949 to his retirement in 1969 he was Director of the Division of Pure Physics for the National Research Council in Ottawa. Herzberg was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1939 of the Royal Society of London in 1951. Herzberg died on March 3, 1999 in Ottawa, Canada.