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Los Angeles chemist wins national award for liquid crystal research

Chemist William M. Gelbart of Los Angeles will be honored April 3 by the world's largest scientific society for his contributions in linking the fundamental physics of liquid crystals and other complex fluids with their behavior. He will receive the 2001 Joel Henry Hildebrand Award in the Theoretical and Experimental Chemistry of Liquids from the American Chemical Society at its 221st national meeting in San Diego.

As a theorist, Gelbart likes to ask "what if" to find answers in turn about the real world. For example: "What if we lived in a universe without attractions between molecules?"

Gelbart, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that question has helped him explain the nature of liquid crystals, the stuff of digital watch and laptop computer displays.

"It's long been known that if there were no attractions, a gas would never condense as a liquid no matter how much you might compress or cool it. But could you have liquid crystals?" he asked. "We believe the answer is 'yes,' that you need only short-range repulsions between molecules."

Understanding how molecules of certain liquids assume a regular lattice structure, or crystal, elucidates why they can conduct electricity.

Gelbart now studies the packing of an even more complex liquid system: he wants to explain how bacterial viruses can package their DNA under pressure to propel it through a cell wall.

"If you wanted to take a long double helix (of DNA) and stuff it into a little box, what is the work you would have to do?" he said. "The DNA is hard to bend, and is repelling itself because of its electric charge, and yet the virus manages to package it at high density."

Gelbart said he didn't consciously think about chemistry as a career when he was young, unlike many other prominent chemists. "I really liked playing ball," he remembered.

Gelbart received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1967 and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1970.

The ACS Joel Henry Hildebrand Award in the Theoretical and Experimental Chemistry of Liquids Award is sponsored by ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Co. and ExxonMobil Chemical Co.

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