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Photochemist Gerry Porter at UBC
About Gerald B. Porter
This is a brief scientific history of Gerry (the name he preferred) or Jerry or Gerald Porter. His career included US Army (Basic training and Chemical warfare) 1944-6, to a first degree at Berkeley 1946-50, where he became president of the Alpha Chi Sigma chemical fraternity, an interlude at the California Research Corporation in Richmond, CA 1950-1, where he carried out oil additives development. He received a Ph.D. from U. of Southern California with Prof. Sidney W. Benson 1951-4, a post-doctoral fellowship at U. of Rochester with Prof W. Albert Noyes, Jr. 1954-6, then a career at the University of British Columbia, 1956-81. He took early retirement then to look after his wife, who had been on home dialysis since 1975 for a kidney disease. For the next five years Porter carried out consulting services with Enchem Development Ltd. He continued research until 2003 at Triumf.
Porter's research with Benson concerned both electronic and vibrational intermolecular energy transfer. The latter did not succeed in his hands but was accomplished later with more sensitive equipment. With Noyes, he worked on the photochemistry of small molecules such as biacetyl and ketene in the gas phase.
For the first few years at UBC, Porter continued gas phase photochemistry with a series on energy transfer. After writing a textbook (Introduction to Physical Inorganic Chemistry) with Kenneth B. Harvey in 1960, and a sabbatical in Germany with Prof. Hans Schlaefer, Porter gradually shifted his research from gas phase studies of organic molecules to aqueous solutions of transition metal complex ions. In Germany, he made the first studies of the phosphorescence of such complex ions.
During the next twenty years, Porter and his students published a series of articles concerning fluorescence and phosphorescence, photochemistry and kinetics, and energy transfer of complex ions of chromium, cobalt, ruthenium.
After retirement Porter made some studies first of the "UFFI" problem (urea formaldehyde foam insulation was a purported irritant) then of solar energy. After a second "retirement", he continued research with Prof. David Walker on reactions of muonium at the Triumf cyclotron facility at UBC until 2003, the last (for sure) retirement.
To get more personal, Gerry was born in England, but raised in New York City. He worked briefly in the aircraft industry in California, then served in the US Army infantry from 1944-6. After the B.Sc. degree, he married LaRae Hampton in 1950 when he was 24. LaRae had been diagnosed with a severe kidney problem and after having their two daghters: Kathy and Wendy, was given 5 years to live. She actually survived another 35! They have 4 grandchildren: Grant, Ryan, Colin and Adrienne. After LaRae Porter died in 1990, Gerry and Jane Steel became "partners" and have travelled extensively together, not only in Europe but in on the wild coast of British Columbia by sailboat and kayak. Porter's interests, aside from chemistry, range from skiing in winter, kayaking in spring to fall, to playing squash and chamber music (he plays the violin and viola in a string quartet and a piano trio) year-round.
If you happen to want to look at publications, check the last link below.
If, in addition, you should want to know more about Gerry, try the link to Chapter 1 below to his opus. Details about LaRae's dialysis treatment, click on the dialysis link.
Chapter 1 of Porter's Memories
Porter's Science world
Dialysis
Publications
Send E-Mail to: gbporter@shaw.ca
Copyright © 2007 Gerald B. Porter. All Rights Reserved