Education
Jesus College.
Jesus College.
His specific interest was in theory and experiment for the structure and dynamics of polymer molecules, including various uses of the light scattering method. Stockmayer became interested in the mathematical aspects of physical chemistry as an undergraduate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A Rhodes Scholarship brought him to Jesus College, Oxford, where he undertook gas kinetics research with Doctorate. L. Chapman. He introduced the Stockmayer potential.
Stockmayer returned to Massachusetts Institute of Technology for Doctor of Philosophy research and pursued his study of statistical mechanics, which he later continued at Columbia University.
He returned again to Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1943 to study the theory of network formation and the gelation criterion. Stockmayer increasingly directed his attention to theories of polymer solutions, light scattering and chain dynamics.
After a Guggenheim Fellowship for the academic year 1954/1955 in Strasbourg, France, he returned once more to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then moved to Dartmouth College in 1961. There, he worked primarily on copolymers in dilute solution, established the journal Macromolecules, and collaborated with many Japanese scientists.
A fellowship in honor of Professor Stockmayer was established at Dartmouth College in 1994.
National Academy of Sciences]
A former member of the National Academy of Sciences, he was recognized as one of the twentieth century pioneers of polymer science.
