Contributions of alumni and friends in 1979 established the Danforth Lectureship, which aims to bring the most significant practitioners of chemistry to Grinnell College. The Lectureship honors a distinguished member of the Chemistry Department, Joseph D. Danforth, who joined the faculty in 1947 and retired in 1979. Professor Danforth was a baccalaureate of Wabash College and received his Ph.D. at Purdue University. He was a research chemist for the Universal Oil Products Co. in Chicago for ten years before joining the Grinnell faculty. Professor Danforth carried on an active research program in heterogeneous catalysis and in kinetics of decomposition of solids while teaching at Grinnell. This work was pursued throughout his career and into his retirement with scores of Grinnell students who are now scientists.

Danforth Lecturers

2011 R. Graham Cooks Purdue University Seminar: Chemical Analysis in Situ: Operating Rooms, Crime Scenes, Grocery Stores, & Factory Floors
2010 Geraldine Richmond U. of Oregon Convocation: Going Nonlinear to Understand Environmentally Important Processes at Liquid Surfaces; Seminar: Oil on Water: Calming the Seas but not the Science
2009 Jonas C. Peters Mass. Inst. of Technology Convocation: The quest for earth abundant hydrogen evolution catalysts; Seminar: Multi-electron transformations at low-coordinate iron centers
2008 Robert H. Grubbs Calif. Inst. of Technology Design of efficient olefin metathesis catalysts (lecture for chemistry students); Where fundamental chemistry can take you: Following the Olefin metathesis (lecture for general public)
2006 Peter C. Agre Duke Univ. Medical Center Seminar: Blueprints for Cellular Plumbing System; Convocation: My Life in Science: From Lake Wobegone to Stockholm; and HHMI Symposium Keynote Lecture: Aquaporin Water Channels - The Nobel Lecture
2004 Stephen Lippard Mass. Inst. of Technology Seminar: Hydrocarbon Oxidation at Non-Heme Iron Centers; and Convocation: Platinum Complexes: From DNA Damage to Curing Cancer
2002 K. Barry Sharpless Scripps Research Inst. An Asymmetric Odyssey Leading Back to Its Port of Origin
2001 Jesse L. Beauchamp Calif. Inst. of Technology Countering Terrorism: Scientific and Technological Challenges
2001 Mario Molina Mass. Inst. of Technology The Antarctic Ozone Hole
2000 Cynthia Friend Harvard University Science and Technology in Society
1999 Doug P. Blanchard NASA (CREATION)2: LIFE ON MARS
1997 Peter Kollman ('66) University of CA, SF Computer Modeling in Physics, Chemistry, and Biology: Both Numbers and Beautiful Pictures Give Lots of Insight
1996 Dean Martin ('55) U. of South Florida Malthusian vs. Cornucopean Views of the Environment
1995 Carl Djerassi Stanford Univ. Birth Control in the Year 2001
1994 Jacqueline Barton Calif. Inst. of Technology Travels Along the DNA Helix
1993 Margaret A. Tolbert ('79) U. of Colorado Stratospheric Ozone Depletion at the Ends of the Earth and In Between
1992 Shirley Malcom Amer. Assoc. for the Advancement of Science Science: Making New Connections
1991 Bassam Shakhashiri U. of Wisconsin Enhancing the Quality of Education in America
1990 R. Stephen Berry U. of Chicago Guiding Policy for a Technological Future
1988 Clair Patterson ('43) Calif. Inst. of Technology Effects of 7000 Years of Lead Technology on Human Cultures and Health
1987 Alfred Bader Sigma Aldrich Co. The Bible Through Dutch Eyes
1986 Thomas R. Cech ('70) U. of Colorado Catalysis by RNA
1985 George G. Hammond Allied Chemical Flexibility of Scientific Dillettantism
1984 Melvin Calvin U. of California Energy Agriculture
1983 Derek Davenport Purdue Univ. The Relative Unimportance of the Invective Effect in Physical Organic Chemistry
1982 Mary Good Universal Oil Products, Inc. Science and Society
1981 Herbert C. Brown Purdue Univ. From Little Acorns to Tall Oaks - From Boranes through Organoboranes
1980 Thomas Lippincott U. of Arizona The Boltzmann Distribution