Polanyi, John Charles

Polanyi, John Charles, 1929–, Canadian chemist. Raised and educated in England, he worked as a researcher in Canada before taking a teaching position at the Univ. of Toronto in 1956. He used spectroscopy as a means to detect the infrared light emitted by molecules during chemical reactions. Polanyi shared the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Dudley Herschbach and Yuan Lee.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

See more Encyclopedia articles on: Chemistry: Biographies