January Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, January 20, 1999
The Phoenix
812 Race Street, Downtown

Meeting Jointly Sponsored with Sigma Iota Pi

Student Affiliate Night
Featured Speaker
Dr. Joseph B. Lambert
Northwestern University

Schedule of events:

Dinner reservations: Call the section answering line at 558-1224 or email cintacs@uc.edu. Include your name with correct spelling, affiliation, and menu choice. Reservations must be received by Monday, January 18 at 10:00 AM. If you have any difficulties, please call Donna Taylor at 558-0979. As a reminder, if you decide you must miss a meeting after you have made reservations, please call to cancel. If not, the section will have to charge you for the dinner because it will be charged for the dinner.

Directions: The Phoenix is located at the corner of Ninth and Race (the next block over from Vine). Parking is available at the Garfield Place Garage, which is next door to The Phoenix on Ninth Street and is $3.00 after 5:00 pm.

From I-75: Take the Seventh Street Exit. Go to Vine and go north on Vine to Ninth St. Take a left onto Ninth.

From I-71: Take the Reading Road exit. Follow Reading Road past Liberty St. (it then becomes Central Parkway) to Walnut. Take Walnut south (one way) to Ninth, then a right onto Ninth.

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Unraveling the Past Through Chemistry

Joseph B. Lambert
Northwestern University
Evanston, Illinois

Chemistry serves archaeology in a number of different ways. The chemical composition of an inorganic artifact such as pottery or glass can help determine whether it is authentic, how it was made, when it was made, where its raw materials came from, and over what routes it was traded. Organic artifacts are more difficult to analyze, but nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy permits some of these same questions to be answered. Compositional analysis of bone can provide information about ancient diet. Chemistry also can help locate new archaeological sites and help preserve artifacts that have been excavated.

Joseph B. Lambert is Clare Hamilton Hall Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. He was born in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, and grew up in San Antonio, Texas, where he attended Alamo Heights High School. He received his undergraduate education at Yale University (B.S., summa cum laude, 1962) and carried out his graduate studies at the California Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1965). In 1965, he returned to Illinois to begin his work at Northwestern. His research has been divided among the areas of organic reaction mechanisms, organosilicon chemistry, nuclear magnetic resonance, conformational analysis, and archaeological chemistry. Lambert has been an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow (1968-70), a Guggenheim Fellow (1973), a Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (1978), and a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer (1997-98). He has been a visiting lecturer in Argentina, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, and Poland. He was awarded the National Fresenius Award in 1976 and was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1981. In 1987, he received the James Flack Norris Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Teaching of Chemistry, from the Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society. In 1989, he received the Fryxell Award from the Society for American Archaeology in recognition of his chemical contributions to archaeology. He was elected a Fellow of the Illinois State Academy of Science in 1992 and received the National Catalyst Award for excellence in teaching by the Chemical Manufacturers Association in 1993. He received the Northwestern University Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1994. He was the 1998 recipient of the Frederic Stanley Kipping Award in Silicon Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. He was the founder and continues as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Physical Organic Chemistry. He is past chair of the ACS Subdivision of Archaeological Chemistry, past president of the Society of Archaeological Sciences, past chair of his department, and past chair of the ACS Division History of Chemistry.

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Updated 13 January 1999 by cinacs@www.che.uc.edu