Kevin K. Lehmann (born September 7, 1955, in

Newark, New Jersey Newark ( , ) is the List of municipalities in New Jersey, most populous City (New Jersey), city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, the county seat of Essex County, New Jersey, Essex County, and a principal city of the New York metropolitan area. ...

) is an American

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a graduated scientist trained in the study of chemistry, or an officially enrolled student in the field. Chemists study the composition of ...

and

spectroscopist Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets electromagnetic spectrum, electromagnetic spectra. In narrower contexts, spectroscopy is the precise study of color as generalized from visible light to all bands of the electromagn ...

at the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and contains his The Lawn, Academical Village, a World H ...

, best known for his work in the area of intramolecular and collisional dynamics, and for his advances in the method of cavity ring down spectroscopy (CRDS). Raised in

Irvington, New Jersey Irvington is a Township (New Jersey), township in Essex County, New Jersey, Essex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, the township's population was 61,176, an increase of 7,250 (+13.4%) from the 2010 Uni ...

, a suburb of Newark, Lehmann studied chemical physics and mathematics at

Rutgers University Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...

Cook College The School of Environmental and Biological Sciences (SEBS) is a constituent school of Rutgers University's New Brunswick-Piscataway campus. Formerly known as Cook College—which was named for George Hammell Cook, a professor at Rutgers in ...

, graduating with highest honors in 1977. His undergraduate research included work in reaction dynamics with John Krenos and John Tully of

Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, the company operates several lab ...

photoelectron spectroscopy Photoemission spectroscopy (PES), also known as photoelectron spectroscopy, refers to energy measurement of electrons emitted from solids, gases or liquids by the photoelectric effect, in order to determine the binding energies of electrons in t ...

with Joseph Berkowitz of

Argonne National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in Lemont, Illinois, Lemont, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1946, the laboratory is owned by the United Sta ...

, and raman and resonate multiphoton ionization (

REMPI Resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization (REMPI) is a technique applied to the spectroscopy of atoms and small molecules. In practice, a tunable laser can be used to access an excited intermediate state. The selection rules associated with a ...

) spectroscopies under Professor Lionel Goodman. Lehmann went on to receive his doctorate in chemical physics from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

in 1983, and was elected to the

Harvard Society of Fellows The Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginnings of their careers by Harvard University for their potential to advance academic wisdom, upon whom are bestowed distinctive opportunities to foster their individual and intellect ...

, where he was a junior fellow until 1986. Under the direction of

William Klemperer William A. Klemperer (October 6, 1927 – November 5, 2017) was an American chemist, chemical physicist and molecular spectroscopist. Klemperer is most widely known for introducing molecular beam methods into chemical physics research, greatly ...

, Lehmann's graduate work involved studies of highly excited vibrational states using

photoacoustic spectroscopy Photoacoustic spectroscopy is the measurement of the effect of absorbed electromagnetic energy (particularly of light) on matter by means of acoustic detection. The discovery of the photoacoustic effect dates to 1880 when Alexander Graham Bell sho ...

. During his time as a fellow, he served as a visiting scientist at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

's George Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory. There he developed with Stephen Coy the technique of microwave-detected, microwave-optical double resonance, which permits the automatic assignment of complex spectra. Appointed to the chemistry faculty of

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in 1985, Lehmann received both the Henry and Camille Dreyfus Award for new faculty and the

Presidential Young Investigator Award The Presidential Young Investigator Award (PYI) was awarded by the National Science Foundation of the United States Federal Government. The program operated from 1984 to 1991, and was replaced by the NSF Young Investigator (NYI) Awards and Preside ...

from the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

in his first year with the university. In 1987, the university acknowledged him with the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. He was promoted to associate professor in 1991, and to full professor in 1995, the same year he was named a fellow of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of ...

. He received the Thomas A. Edison Patent Award in 2002 for his work in CRDS, and in 2003, was granted the Earle K. Plyler Prize in Molecular Spectroscopy. Lehmann left Princeton in 2005 to join the faculty of the University of Virginia, where he has continued his work in development of ultrasensitive spectroscopic methods with applications in trace gas detection, as well as studies of molecular dynamics in the gas phase and superfluid helium.

Articles by Kevin K. Lehmann

"Potential of a neutral impurity in a large 4He cluster"

"The infrared multiphoton excitation and photochemistry of DN3"

References

External links

/ University of Virginia faculty page
21st-century American chemists 1955 births Living people Harvard University alumni Harvard Fellows Rutgers University alumni Princeton University faculty University of Virginia faculty American spectroscopists People from Irvington, New Jersey Fellows of the American Physical Society {{US-chemist-stub