A medal for metal mettle

Michael Miller

When William J. Evans began his study of lanthanides 30 years ago, he

chose them largely because they were so obscure.

“Nobody else was studying them,” said the UC Irvine chemistry

professor, who came to Orange County in 1982 after teaching for seven

years, starting at the University of Chicago. “If there were 100

people looking at other metals, there might have been one looking at

lanthanides.”

Lanthanide metals are used in a number of common objects --

including lamps, lasers, film projectors, magnets and television

screens -- but until recently, few scientists had the patience to

study them since they do not form compounds easily. When Evans

started work with his graduate students in 1975, it took two years to

even put out a research paper.

Three decades later, the world of chemistry is different -- and

Evans has made no small contribution. Today, he will become the 43rd

winner of the American Chemical Society’s Award in Inorganic

Chemistry, the first ever winner from UC Irvine.

The award, established in 1962, includes a $5,000 prize and a

certificate. The winner is also invited to contribute an article to

the scientific journal Aldrichimica Acta.

“It was quite exciting,” Evans said, “because two of the previous

award winners were my teachers -- the people who wrote the textbooks

I studied from. It was nice to have my name on that list.”

When he receives the award this evening at the Manchester Grand

Hyatt in San Diego, Evans will join his doctoral advisor, M.

Frederick Hawthorne (1973), and his postdoctoral advisor, Earl L.

Muetterties (1965), among chemists who have been honored by the

American Chemical Society. Evans, who teaches graduate and

undergraduate students at UC Irvine, runs a laboratory on campus in

which he and his students test lanthanides for use in

pharmaceuticals, fuel-cell recycling and other fields.

“He’s pursued lanthanides for many years, even when people were

not interested in the subject,” said Iqbal Pittalwala, UCI’s

assistant director for media relations. “A lot of people considered

them uninteresting metals, but he persisted.

“He took on lanthanides as a challenge. In science, you want to

work where it’s not too crowded. He took a risk in working with

lanthanides, and it paid off.”

In recent years, Evans and his students have made a number of

discoveries regarding lanthanides, linking them to the chemical

process of reduction, and isolating the first molecular examples of

two new oxidation states. Several of Evans’ students will accompany

him to San Diego for the awards ceremony.

“He’s dedicated -- that’s for sure,” said graduate student Dustin

Dixon. “He loves those lanthanides.”

Evans, a Wisconsin native, graduated as a chemistry major from the

University of Wisconsin in 1969, then received his doctorate at UCLA

in 1973. He did postdoctoral research at Cornell University and

obtained tenure on the University of Chicago faculty, but he moved to

UC Irvine in 1982 because he saw it as a better opportunity for his

field.

“UCI was in a growing mode, and the University of Chicago was

not,” Evans said. “It’s still in a growing mode. I’m as excited about

this place now as I was in 1982.”

* MICHAEL MILLER covers education and may be reached at (714)

966-4617 or by e-mail at michael.miller@latimes.com.