Education
Wahrhaftig was born in Sacramento, California where he attended grade school, high school, and two years at Sacramento Junior College.
Wahrhaftig was born in Sacramento, California where he attended grade school, high school, and two years at Sacramento Junior College.
The Wahrhaftig diagram that illustrates the relationship between internal energy and unimolecular ion decomposition is named after him. He attended the University of California, Berkeley where he did undergraduate research with Joel Hildebrand and received an Bachelor of Arts in chemistry in 1938. He went to graduate school at the California Institute of Technology where he worked under Richard M. Badger and Verner Schomaker.
He received his Doctor of Philosophy in 1941.
He was a research fellow at Caltech from 1941 to 1945. He then worked at the Wright Air Development Center in Pasadena, California, and as a University Fellow at the Ohio State University with Herrick L. Johnston.
Wahrhaftig joined the faculty at the Chemistry Department at the University of Utah in 1947 where he rose through the ranks and spent the rest of his career. He retired to become an emeritus professor in 1987.