Deeply Mourning Prof. Allen Joseph Bard The Worldwide Famous Electrochemist
The worldwide famous electrochemist, the fellow of both National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the professor of Department of Chemistry, University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Allen Joseph Bard, passed away on February 11 at his age of 90.
Prof. Bard was born in 1933 in New York, USA. After earning his bachelor’s degree at City College of New York, and Ph.D. degree at Harvard University, He joined the University of Texas at Austin, served there as a professor for 65 years, and was honored as one of most important scientists in the university academia history.
Prof. Bard was a worldwide famous scientist. His research interests covered fundamental electrochemistry and electroanalytical chemistry, electrogenerated chemiluminescence, semiconductor photocatalysis and photoelectrochemistry. He had published more than 1000 peer-reviewed academic papers and 30 authorized patents. For tens of years he had been leading the frontier of electrochemical science. Scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM), invented and developed by him, is now an important electrochemical instrumental methodology with high spatiotemporal resolution, and is applied extensively in electrochemical energy, catalysis, materials, biology, medicine, etc., pushing forward the progresses in electrochemical science and technology. By him, electrogenerated chemiluminescence (ECL) is now a high sensitive electroanalytical technique, creating the huge global social economy and commercial values.
Prof. Bard was a worldwide famous educator. He had mentored more than 75 doctoral students and 150 postdoctoral fellows from tens of countries and regions. Most of them have become the pioneering scientists and researchers in universities, institutes and companies all over the world including America, China, Europe, Japan, Korea, etc. He wrote and co-wrote three scientific books, edited and co-edited series of electrochemical books. Among them, the book Electrochemical Methods: Fundamentals and Applications is the most popular textbook in the world, and has been considered as “the Bible of Electrochemistry”.
For 20 years Prof. Bard had served as the chief editor of the Journal of American Chemical Society (JACS), the flagship journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and was awarded the highest honor of ACS, i.e., the Priestley Award. Prof. Bard was also the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, such as the Wolf Prize (2008), the National Medal of Science (2011), the Fermi Award (2013), the King Faisal International Prize in Science (2019), etc. Because of his outstanding achievements in scientific research, education and service in electrochemistry, Prof. Bard was honored as the “Father of Modern Electrochemistry”.
Acting as the president of International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), Prof. Bard dedicated to push the China-US academic communications. In early 1980s, He started to accept enthusiastically and mentored meticulously Chinese overseas students and visiting scholars. According to incomplete statistics, there are 107 Chinese scholars all over the world who has worked with him as PhD students, post-doctor students or visiting scholars. He had cultivated a lot of electrochemical talents for China. In 1995 Prof. Bard gave the plenary lecture at the annual meeting of International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE) held at Xiamen, China, appealing more than 500 international scholars to attend the academic event of electrochemistry. He also acted as the member of International Advisory Committee of the State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces (PCOSS). He had made important contributions to the development of electrochemistry in China.
Prof. Bard passed away. However, his scientific achievements will be engraved in the history of electrochemistry, his scholarly spirit will be passed on to the young generations sustainably.
Chinese Society of Electrochemistry (CSE), the Editorial Board of Journal of electrochemistry, and the Chinese electrochemical community, will miss him dearly.
