The Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professorships Program

The University of Iowa honors the memory of an Iowa woman, Ida Cordelia Beam, whose quiet gift of Benton County Land ever renews learning. The program has since 1977 brought hundreds of eminent scholars and scientists to give public lectures and to meet with students and faculty.

Most Recent Lecturer

Dr. Jacqueline K. Barton is the Arthur and Marian Hanisch Memorial Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. Barton has received numerous awards, including the Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation (1985) awarded to the outstanding young scientist in the United States, the American Chemical Society (ACS) Award in Pure Chemistry (1988), the ACS Breslow Award in Bioorganic Chemistry (2003), and many more. She was a fellow of the Sloan Foundation, a Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, an NSF Presidential Young Investigator, and a recipient of a prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (1991). She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2002.

Professor Barton has pioneered the application of transition metal complexes as tools to probe recognition and reactions of double helicle DNA. She has designed chiral coordination complexes that recognize nucleic acid sites with affinities and specifities rivaling DNA-binding proteins. These synthetic transition metal complexes have been useful in elucidating fundamental chemical principles which govern the recognition of nucleic acids, in developing luminescent and photochemical reagents as new diagnostic tools, and in laying a foundation for the design of novel chemotherapeutics and biosensors. With these transition metal probes, she has also carried out seminal studies to elucidate electron transfer chemistry mediated by the DNA double helix.

Past Ida Cordelia Beam Lecturer's

• 2001. Karl Wieghardt. Max Plank Institute, Germany.
• 1997. Mario Molina. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• 1994. James Collman. Stanford University.
• 1992. John Polanyi. University of Toronto, Canada.
• 1990. Malcomb Green. University of Oxford, England.
• 1989. Derek Barton. Texas A & M University.
• 1987. Cristopher Walsh. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• 1986. George Pimentel. University of California, Berkeley.