Marilyn E. Jacox

Marilyn E. Jacox (c. 1929 – October 30, 2013) was an American Physical Chemist. She was an National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Fellow and Scientist Emeritus in the Sensor Science Division.^[1] She was born in Utica, New York.^[2]

Education

Marilyn Jacox received a BA, summa cum laude in chemistry in 1951 from Syracuse University, having attended the Utica campus, now Utica College. She received a Ph.D. degree in Physical Chemsitry from Cornell University in September, 1956, under the guidance of Prof. Simon H. Bauer. Dr. Jacox spend the following two years as postdoctoral research fellow in the Chemistry Department of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, working with Prof. Oscar K. Rice.^[3]

Career

Following her postdoctoral work at Univ. of North Carolina, Dr. Jacox became a Fellow in Solid State Spectroscopy at the Mellon Institute, where she began working on the spectroscopy of free radicals and other unstable chemical species trapped in chemically inert cryogenic matrices, and area that was to dominate her scientific work for the rest of her life. The first 15 years of this work was done in collaboration with Dr. Dolphus E. Milligan, first at the Mellon Institute and, after 1963, at the National Bureau of Standards (later to be renamed National Institute of Standards and Technology. The Milligan-Jacox scientific collaboration only ended upon the death of Milligan in 1973.^[4] Dr. Jacox was scientifically active and highly productive up until her death.

Dr. Jacox received an Utica College Outstanding Alumnus Award in 1963 and five years later was awarded the Washington Academy of Sciences Award in Physical Sciences.^[5] In 1970 she was awarded U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award for her distinguished service. In 1973 she received the Federal Woman's Award and the Samuel Wesley Stratton Award which she got from National Bureau of Standards.^[5]

She was a member of the Inter−American Photochemical Society from 1978-79 on the Executive Committee level, and was an Election Committee member by 1980. In 1987 she received the 40 Alumni of Achievement Award from Utica College.^[5] She was a member of Sigma Xi as President Elect from 1987−88, and as President from 1988-89. The same year she was awarded Ellis R. Lippincott Award. In 2003, she was awarded the E. Bright Wilson Award in Spectroscopy by American Chemical Society. In the same year, she was awarded the first George C. Pimentel Award for her Advances in Matrix Isolation Spectroscopy.^[6]

Dr. Jacox was a Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society. She was a reviewer for Chemical Intermediates from 1984−89, and for Journal of Chemical Physics from 1989-91. In 2007 she received another award and again from the Washington Academy of Sciences, for Distinguished Career in Science.^[7]

Death

She died, after a brief illness, on October 30, 2013, aged 84.^[1] She lived in Montgomery Village, Maryland.

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