Rate My Professor Tobin J. Marks

Tobin J. Marks is the Vladimir N. Ipatieff Professor of Catalytic Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at Northwestern University, holding additional appointments as Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Chemical and Biological Engineering, and Applied Physics. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Maryland in 1966 and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970. Marks joined Northwestern University in 1970 as Assistant Professor of Chemistry, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1974 and full Professor in 1978, and assumed the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professorship in Chemistry in 1986, the Vladimir N. Ipatieff Professorship in 1999, Materials Science and Engineering in 1987, Applied Physics in 2009, and Chemical and Biological Engineering in 2017.

His research interests center on sustainable and unsolved homogeneous and heterogeneous catalytic transformations, single-site surface catalysts, exploratory organo-f-element and early-transition metal organometallic chemistry, novel polymer design and synthesis, flexible stretchable and printable electronics, metal oxide electronics, new solar energy materials, molecule-based photonic materials, superconductivity, metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, and biological aspects of transition metal chemistry. Marks has profoundly influenced the fields of catalysis, organometallics, polymerization, and materials science, evidenced by his ISI h-index of 170 and Google Scholar h-index of 190, extensive patents, and founding of Flexterra, Inc. (formerly Polyera, Inc.) for commercializing flexible electronics technologies. Major awards include the U.S. National Medal of Science (2005), American Chemical Society Priestley Medal (2017), Camille and Henry Dreyfus Prize in the Chemical Sciences (2011), Principe de Asturias Prize for Technical and Scientific Research (2008), Materials Research Society Von Hippel Award (2009), U.S. National Academy of Sciences Award in the Chemical Sciences (2012), Harvey Prize in Science and Technology (2017), Karl Ziegler Prize (2003), and eight ACS medals including Willard Gibbs (2001), Linus Pauling (2001), F. Albert Cotton (2000), and Theodore Richards (2012). He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and foreign member of several international academies. Key publications include "Demystifying Group-4 Polyolefin Hydrogenolysis Catalysis" (PNAS, 2024), "Gas-Phase Surface Modification to Control Catalyst Structure and Yields in Methane Dehydroaromatization" (Microporous and Mesoporous Materials, 2024), and "Impact of Iron Species Dispersion on Fe/ZSM-5 Catalyst Performance for Methane Dehydroaromatization" (ChemCatChem, 2024).