October 2007

CAREER NARRATIVE

Professor Weil (born 1929, Germany) took his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics at the University of Chicago (1955), under the tutelage of Professor C.A. Hutchison Jr. The doctoral thesis dealt with then-unknown triplet states in aromatic molecules, and with spin concentration analysis in free radicals. He also worked as technical assistant in the Fermi Institute for Nuclear Studies, and the Institute for the Study of Metals in Chicago [thermodynamics of alloys, self-diffusion in alkali metals], and was co-author of several resulting papers now deemed to be 'classic' ones.¹

Thereafter, Dr. Weil spent two years in the Department of Chemistry, Princeton University, as Corning Post-doctoral Fellow. He set up electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopic equipment and worked with gas adsorption on charcoals as studied by EPR spectroscopy. For two years subsequently, he served as Instructor in Chemistry, was involved with a number of Physical Chemistry Courses, and created his own research program. He spent summers at the Mellon Institute as Visiting Fellow with the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. group. His research interests in silicate systems originated during this period.

In 1959, Dr. Weil accepted a staff position at Argonne National Laboratory, and became a Group Leader soon thereafter. He set up an EPR/ENDOR laboratory, and initiated studies of magnetic defects in irradiated covalent solids. He was involved in a number of other research projects, including the discovery of tricovalent oxygen (bridging two transition-metal ions), and the use of noble-gas fluorides in fluorination of organic molecules. Dr. Weil spent one year away from ANL as a Fulbright Scholar at the Department of Physics, University of Canterbury in New Zealand (1967-68). Besides teaching several courses there, he began a decade-long theoretical study of the effects of crystal symmetry on magnetic resonance spectra, and was involved as well in several experimental projects. After 12 years at Argonne, during which he progressed to the Senior Scientist rank, Dr. Weil moved to the University of Saskatchewan (1971) to take up a tenured Professorship in Chemistry. He continues to have occasional research contact with Argonne.

Since coming to Saskatoon, Prof. Weil has been heavily involved in both research and teaching. The latter category has included more than a dozen classes, ranging from Elementary Chemistry to Advanced Topics in Chemical Physics. Several generations of graduate students have been trained in Dr. Weil's laboratories. His research efforts have centered on the defect structure of crystalline quartz, plus sophisticated theoretical² and free-radical studies as indicated in the publication list. Quartz is a key material in the electronics, optics and glass industries.

Among Dr. Weil's extracurricular activities, he organized (and co-chaired) the VIth International Symposium on Magnetic Resonance (500+ delegates, May 1977, Banff, Canada), and served on the Grants Selection Committee in Chemistry for the National Research Council (NRC/NSERC) of Canada (1976-1979; Chairman 1978-1979). In 1979-80, he spent a one-year sabbatical leave as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Chemistry, University of Chicago. Another activity then was as member of the Scientific Program Committee for the 28th IUPAC Congress, held at Vancouver in 1981. Dr. Weil organized several Physical Chemistry/Chemical Physics Symposia for the 69th Chemical Institute of Canada (CIC) Conference which met at Saskatoon in June 1986. Among these was the international symposium "Electronic Magnetic Resonance of the Solid State". He acted as Editor for an ensuing book with this title, containing a series of review articles, published in 1987 by the Canadian Society for Chemistry. During a sabbatical leave in 1986-87, he was Visiting Professor in the Physics Department at Lehigh University (Fairchild Solid-State Physics Laboratory), accepted an invitation to be Erskine Lecturer at the University of Canterbury, and was a Visiting Research Scientist at New Zealand's Government (DSIR) Laboratory. In 1991, Dr. Weil co-organized the international symposium 'How Good is EPR at Determining Atom Positions?" convened in Denver; an issue of "Applied Magnetic Resonance" in 1992 resulted. In 1993-94, Dr. Weil was again on sabbatical leave, spending the first half of the academic year at the University of Illinois (Urbana, IL) as Visiting Professor of Chemistry and of Internal Medicine (EPR Center), and the second half at the Clarendon Laboratory (Physics) of Oxford University as Visiting Royal Society Fellow. Collaborations in research projects involving silicon dioxide included ¹⁷O nuclear magnetic resonance measurements at the University of Warwick (U.K.), spin trapping at powder surfaces at the University of Cardiff (U.K.), and single-crystal pulsed relaxation time measurements at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zürich (Switzerland). In 1999, he served as Visiting Professor in Physics at the University of Puerto Rico (Mayaguez). In April 2000, Dr. Weil delivered a series of invited lectures in Erice (Sicily) to an international school "Defects in SiO₂ and Related Dielectrics: Science and Technology", sponsored by NATO; A book including a summary review by Dr. Weil appeared in the year 2000. More recently, Dr. Weil co-organized a modest symposium on EPR spectroscopy of solids, at the national GAC/MAC meeting (Geological Association of Canada / Mineralogical Association of Canada) convened In Saskatoon during May 2002. In June 2004, Dr. Weil was the invited keynote speaker at a symposium entitled "Gorges, Clays, and Coulees", 41st Annual Meeting of The Clay Minerals Society, convened at Richland, WA, U.S.A.

Prof. Weil has collaborated actively with various other research groups, in France, Germany (2), in Japan and Korea (2), in New Zealand (2), and in the U.S.A. (3), and continues to do so. The group's quartz work, including frontier techniques such as pulsed microwave and optical detection as well as large-scale Hartree-Fock cluster modeling, has gained international recognition, particularly also in view of the applied importance of this material. It is Dr. Weil's intention to continue this program as his primary one, ongoing and expanding, and he visualizes a decade of exciting developments in it. Certainly the progress and success of his research constitutes his highest priority. As a result, approximately 150 refereed publications have appeared, so far.

Dr. Weil as the senior author recently has completed an introductory text to the field of "Electron Paramagnetic Resonance", published in February of 1994 by John Wiley & Sons, as a totally revised next version of the 1972 book co-authored by J.E. Wertz and J.R. Bolton. There now is a new edition, under the authorship of J.A. Weil and J.R. Bolton, which appeared in early 2007.

A major computer program, EPR-NMR, developed by Prof. Weil's group to do advanced analyses of magnetic resonance spectra, is now being used internationally by 200+ research groups. Relevant to this, a review article "The Simulation of EPR Spectra" by him appeared in 1999.

In 1983, Prof. Weil was elected Thorvaldson Professor of Chemistry (five-year term) at the University of Saskatchewan. A D.Sc. degree was awarded to him by the same institution, in 1985.

Prof. Weil also is involved in various extra-scientific activities. One notable one is his interest in the cultural aspects of crystalline quartz, ranging from anthropological/archaeological aspects to visual aesthetic ones. A bibliography (2500+ references) has been copyrighted, and various articles and books on these topics are planned. A recent venture In Northern New Mexico has led to discovery and characterization of a buried shamanic kit, containing a quartz-crystal fetish of the Largo-Gallina culture; a publication likely will ensue.

Prof. Weil was selected to be the 1996 Distinguished–Researcher Awardee at the University of Saskatchewan, in the spring of that year. As of July 1, 1996, he formally retired and began his career as Professor Emeritus there. In 1999, he was elected to be a Fellow of the International EPR Society. In 2000, he was awarded the Gerhard Herzberg Award by the Spectroscopy Society of Canada.

He also remains very active in research, home and abroad, including recent studies performed with Dr. R. Mashkovtsev in Novosibirsk, Russia and Dr. R.F.C. Claridge's EPR group in New Zealand (University of Canterbury). Such work describing various new centres newly discovered in a-quartz have been described in recent publications, with more to appear. Various advances in the theory of magnetic resonance (EPR and NMR) too have been described.

Prof. Weil at this time has only minor support funds from NSERC, but continues seeking to improve this situation. Happily, other support has materialized at times.

More details of all recent publications can be found on Prof. Weil's Websites: http://chm15127.usask.ca/ & http://www.usask.ca/chemistry/weil.html .

Footnotes

1. See "Mechanism for Diffusion in Metals" in 'Series of Selected Papers in Physics', Physical Society of Japan, Tokyo 1978.

2. One publication was cited in "Memorable Papers from the American Journal of Physics, 1933-1990": See Am. J. Phys. 59, 201 (1991). Also, see Editor's comments in the June 2001 Issue. Also see 69, 635-6 (2001).

SUMMARY OF J.A. WEIL'S RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS

Professor Weil's research has centered in the field of electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy. He has been active in this field from its beginnings in the 1950s, and has contributed appreciably to the growth of the theoretical understanding, especially on the topics of spin-hamiltonian analysis and crystal symmetry aspects, and quantum-mechanical modeling of paramagnetic systems. Recent work has incorporated new techniques including Fourier-transform pulsed EPR and optically-detected as well as ultrasonically modulated magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

In very early work (1950s), he was a member of a team which produced a now "well-known" radiochemical study of self-diffusion in metallic sodium, including pressure dependence thereof.

Several decades of research by Dr. Weil and his group on the properties of metal-ion complexes containing di-oxygen (peroxo and superoxo ions) have led to detailed understanding of oxygen bridging in dicobalt complexes. For example, this work led to his discovery of tricovalent oxygen, i.e., preparation of stable crystalline complexes containing this entity. These studies have had an appreciable impact on investigations of O₂ uptake by haemoglobin, and of superoxide-ion bio-medical chemistry. A lengthy review article (Sykes and Weil 1970) has been published.

Prof. Weil has also contributed extensively to the understanding of the chemistry of certain organic free radical systems, specifically of hydrazyls. These stable molecules are very useful as standards in the field of EPR spectroscopy. The chemical reactions and crystal structures of the hydrazyl/hydrazine system continue to be under investigation by Dr. Weil's research group, especially as there may be possible utilization in biomedical and environmental considerations. Various detailed studies of internal dynamic effects in such molecules, using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, have also been published beginning in the late 1950s. The most recent paper on this topic has been accepted (Canadian Journal of Chemistry), and this project continues.

Recent work has concentrated on creation and characterization of water-soluble hydrazyl-type free radicals, which are being used to react with anti-oxidants in various usages, including potential biomedical applications. The group has been very fortunate to have been handsomely funded by the Scottish Rite Charitable Foundation of Canada, for a three-year period, to do this research. The project requires further work, but looks very promising.

Other related work, in collaboration of Prof. J.S. Richardson (Pharmacology, U. of SK) has led to several publications reporting on the likely role of free radicals in Alzheimer's disease; this work also continues.

Prof. Weil's most major experimental undertaking has been in developing an understanding of the structure of paramagnetic defects in crystalline quartz. Professor Weil pioneered this field, with 50 years of work following initial publications in the 1950s. Emphasis has been on "point defects" and the solid-state chemistry taking place in the structure, arising in part from the presence of low concentrations (ppm X/Si) of hydrogen, alkali ions, aluminum, iron, germanium, phosphorus, titanium, etc. Recent preparation of a unique quartz crystal enriched in the rare nuclear-spin-bearing isotope ¹⁷O has led to special insights. The high-resolution EPR spectroscopy and massive computer analysis required has led to very considerable structural detail (see review articles in 1984, 1992 and 2000 by Weil). Various modeling studies featuring unrestricted Hartree-Fock molecular-orbital models of atomic clusters in crystalline SiO₂ have been published. The primary importance of this body of work is based on the crucial position of crystalline SiO₂ in the Electronics and Communications Industry (Piezoacoustic Oscillators, Memory and MOS Devices, Fiber Optics, ...), in the Glass Industry (Alpha-quartz is the basic simplest model material for the more complex random-structure glasses), and in the Mineralogical/Geological Community. The discovery of a paramagnetic hydrogarnet centre in quartz has led to a whole new understanding of the hydrolytic dissociation of quartzes. In recent years, with the advent of bigger faster computers and of advanced technologies for EPR spectroscopy, the whole field of investigation of SiO₂ and other oxides has been blossoming. Intense effort continues to be placed by Dr. Weil's group in this rapidly evolving field.

A series of papers, written since the year 2000 collaboratively with Prof. Y. Pan and Dr. N. Chen (Geological Sciences, Univ. of Sask.)has yielded much information about various impurity centres in fluorapatite. These detailed EPR studies deal with trace-element amounts of Mn and Gd, which were used as probes of the local structure, and which disclosed interesting site preferences.

There have also been substantial contributions by Prof. Weil to theoretical chemistry advances. In addition to the above-mentioned topics in this area, he has produced major papers on the theory of the hydrogen atom (electric-field and compressional hyperfine effects, Zeeman level crossing, parallel-field resonance), on the use of generalized functions in classical electrodynamics, on the relationship between magnetic resonance anisotropies and crystal symmetry, and on modeling using density functional theory. Recent papers include a density functional theory (DFT) modeling of the notorious [AlO₄]⁰ hole centre in alpha-quartz, correcting the literature, with results now matching the group's experimental EPR findings of 1981. Also, a new generalized lineshape function for magnetic resonance spectral simulation has recently (2003) been introduced.