ECS President | 1991-1992
Larry R. Faulkner was born in Shreveport, LA on November 26, 1944. He received his B.S. degree from Southern Methodist University in 1966, and in 1969 he was awarded his Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Faulkner accepted an assistant professorship at Harvard University. In 1973, he joined the faculty at the University of Illinois. He became Professor of Chemistry in 1979. He spent the 1983-1984 academic year as Professor of Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin. In 1984, he returned to the University of Illinois as head of Department. Dr. Faulkner was appointed Dean in 1989. He became a member of the Materials Research Laboratory in 1978.
From the middle 1960s, while still a doctoral student under Allen J. Bard, through the early 1980s, Dr. Faulkner was active in studies of chemiluminescence arising from very energetic electron transfer reactions in solution. He contributed to the evolution of mechanistic understanding about the way in which fast electron transfer can yield excited states. In the early 1970s, he became interested in the prospects for assembling chemical devices from thin films of molecular materials. He researched the problems of molecular organization and of communication of energy and information in supermolecular assemblies. Other areas of study included semiconduction and electrochromism in phthalocyanine thin films, exciton diffusion in organized assemblies of dyes in polymeric matrices, photoredox processes in zeolites, modified electrodes with thin films of polymers containing redox centers, kinetic limitations to the motion of electrons and holes in the above films, advanced electrochemical instrumentation, and nanosecond timescale electrochemistry at ultra microelectrodes and electrochemistry at high pressures.
Dr. Faulkner published over 110 scientific papers, directing about 40 doctoral theses, and was an organizer or invited speaker at over 70 technical symposia. He chaired the Gordon Research Conference on Electrochemistry in 1984. He co-authored with A. J. Bard the text entitled “Electrochemical Methods: Fundamentals and Applications.” Dr. Faulkner received the U.S. Department of Energy Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement in Materials Chemistry in 1986.
Dr. Faulkner became an active member of The Electrochemical Society in 1973. He served on the Executive Committee of the Physical Electrochemistry Division from 1979 to 1987 and eventually became Chair of the Division. He was Divisional Editor of the Journal of The Electrochemical Society from 1975 to 1980. He received the Young Author Prize in Electrochemical Science and Technology in 1975. He was elected Vice-President of the Society in 1988 and served as President for the term 1991-1992. He was elected Fellow of The Electrochemical Society in 1993.
Dr. Faulkner was co-founder, Board of Directors member, and Treasurer of the Society for Electroanalytical Chemistry, member of ACS Committee on Science, member of Committee 1.3 (Electrochemistry) of IUPAC, member of Gordon Research Conferences Committee, and a member of AAAS.
