Lipscomb, William Nunn, Jr.

Lipscomb, William Nunn, Jr. lĭpˈskəm [key], 1919–2011, American physical chemist, b. Cleveland, Ph.D. California Institute of Technology, 1946. A professor of chemistry at the Univ. of Minnesota (1946–59) and then at Harvard (emeritus from 1990), his use of X-ray techniques to examine the structure of borane molecules (boron-hydrogen compounds) led to advances in the understanding of the nature of chemical bonding in general. For his discoveries he was awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

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