Biography

Rudolph A. Marcus was born on July 21, 1923 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He was interested in sciences since a very young age. He was in fact more interested in mathematics which later extended to science after he excelled during his years at Baron Byng High School. He later went to the McGill University where he studied under Doctor Carl A. Winkler.

As a matter of coincidence, Winkler had studied under another Nobel Prize winner, who was Cyril Hinshelwood at Oxford. Marcus took several classes in mathematics which later helped him in creating his theory on electron transfer.

Marcus earned a B.Sc. in 1943 and a Ph.D. in 1946, both from McGill University. In 1958, Marcus became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He is an active professor at Caltech and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He is also a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science.

As a kid, Marcus always loved going to school. Since neither of his parents had a higher education, his academic "idols" were these two paternal uncles and one of their uncles, his great-uncle, Henrik Steen (ne Markus). Marcus 'admiration for him, living in faraway Sweden, was not because of a teol.dr. which he had received from the University of Uppsala in 1915 nor because of the many books he wrote. In fact, Marcus knew nothing of that but rather because he was reputed to speak 13 languages. Marcus grew up in Montreal and was an only child of loving parents. He admired his father's athletic prowess and his mother's expressive singing and piano playing.

Being exposed to the electron transfer theory, stimulated by a basic love of concepts and mathematics, it was a marvellous experience for Marcus. During the first three months of the theory, he read everything that he could lay his hands on regarding reaction rate theory, including Marcelin's classic 1915 theory which came within one small step of the Transition State Theory of 1935. He read numerous theoretical papers in German, a primary language for the "chemical dynamics" field in the 1920s and 1930s and attended his first formal course in quantum mechanics, given by Nathan Rosen in the Physics Department, and was guided by Oscar in a two-man weekly seminar in which he described a paper he had read and pointed out the assumptions in it that he had overlooked. His life as a working theorist began three months after this preliminary study and background reading, when Oscar gently nudged him towards working on a particular problem.

Theory of Electron Transfer

Rudolph A. Marcus came up with his theory on electron transfer which is also known as Marcus theory. According to this theory, electron transfer is one of the simplest forms of any chemical reaction. It involves one outer-sphere electron transfer between substances of the same atomic structure likewise to Marcus's studies between bivalent and trivalent iron ions.

Electron transfer may be considered as one of the most basic forms of chemical reaction but without it, life cannot exist. This makes electron transfer important. Electron transfer is used in all respiratory functions which include even photosynthesis in plants. In the process of oxidizing food molecules, two hydrogen ions, two electrons, and an oxygen molecule react to make an exothermic reaction as well as H2O or water. Due to the fact that electron transfer is such a broad, common, as well as essential reaction within nature, Marcus's theory has become vital within the field of chemistry. Marcus received a Nobel Prize for this theory on electron transfer in 1992.