William Lipscomb

William Nunn Lipscomb Jr. grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, and earned his doctorate from Caltech under Linus Pauling. He served on the faculty of the University of Minnesota before becoming a long-serving professor of chemistry at Harvard University in 1959.

Lipscomb unraveled the complex three-dimensional bonding of boron hydrides (boranes) using low-temperature X-ray crystallography, introducing the concept of three-center two-electron bonds. His structural methodologies also revolutionized protein crystallography, revealing the detailed structures of carboxypeptidase A and other major biological enzymes.