Glen A. Russell and semidiones

HIST 22

Kathleen M. Trahanovsky, ktrahan@iastate.edu, Department of Chemistry, Iowa State University, 1608 Gilman Hall, Ames, IA 50011
Glen A Russell earned a Ph D with Herbert C Brown at Purdue, worked at the General Electric Research laboratory, and then spent forty years (1958-1998) in the Chemistry Department at Iowa State University. During his career he made significant contributions to the understanding of several classical free radical reactions such as halogenation and autoxidation. He was a pioneer in the use of electron spin resonance to study organic radicals. Early in that work he and graduate student Tom Strom discovered that oxidation of alpha hydroxyketones or reduction of alpha diketones in dimethylsulfoxide with base generated an alicyclic semiquinone type radical anion for which Russell coined the name semidione. Over several years Russell and coworkers used the semidione functionality as a spin center to study electron delocalization and conformations of a large number of aliphatic and alicyclic systems.