Kahn
Chair in the Natural Sciences:
Marsha Lester
SAS
Dean Samuel H. Preston has announced
that Professor of Chemistry, Marsha
I. Lester has been appointed to the
Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed
Term Chair in the Natural Sciences.
Dr.
Lester joined the Penn faculty in
1982 after a National Science Foundation
Postdoctoral Fellowship at Bell Labs.
She received her B.A. from Rutgers
University in 1976 and Ph.D. from
Columbia University in 1981. A physical
chemist, her current research focuses
on fundamental aspects of the interactions
and reactions between key atmospheric
species, in particular involving
the hydroxyl radical. She has been
selected as a Fellow of the American
Association for the Advancement of
Science and the American Physical
Society and has served on the editorial
boards of Chemical Physics Letters,
Molecular Physics, and the Journal
of Physical Chemistry.
Her
honors include a John Simon Guggenheim
Foundation Fellowship, a Miller Visiting
Research Professorship at Berkeley,
the Broida Prize of the International
Symposium on Free Radicals, a National
Science Foundation Career Advancement
Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship,
and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus
Teacher-Scholar Award. She has recently
been chair of the Division of Laser
Science of the American Physical
Society, and has also served on various
advisory committees of the Department
of Energy, the National Research
Council, and the National Science
Foundation.
This
chair was created in 1998 through
the bequest of Edmund J. and Louise
W. Kahn. Mr. Kahn was a 1925 graduate
of the Wharton School who had a highly
successful career in the oil and
natural gas industry. Mrs. Kahn was
a Smith College graduate who worked
for Newsweek magazine and
owned an interior design firm. The
Kahns were remarkable philanthropists
who gave generously to Penn, most
significantly to Van Pelt Library,
the Modern Languages College House,
and in support of faculty in SAS.
Mr. Kahn died in 1984, and Mrs. Kahn
remained very close to Penn until
her death in 1995.
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