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 Sound undergraduate and graduate training, and the
solid foundation for fundamental research, go back to 1865 when Chemistry
was first taught as an undergraduate course.
Prof. Arthur Michael
established the department in 1882 and began his distinguished career at
Tufts as an academic scientist. Under his guidance, Tufts College, as it
was then known, achieved international prominence in the area of organic
chemistry. The first doctorate in chemistry at Tufts was awarded in 1904
to
Arthur Becket Lamb
who went on to serve as Editor of the Journal of the American Chemical
Society from 1918-1949.
Up until 1894, there were no majors at
Tufts. Instead, students completed a fixed curriculum leading toward
the bachelor of arts or bachelor of science degree. In the Fall of 1894,
Tufts instituted 12 majors within the curriculum to give students the
opportunity to develop depth of knowledge alongside the traditional
prescribed course work. Chemistry was one of these first majors offered.
The tradition of high quality
research coupled with educational excellence continues at Tufts
today. We offer students the facilities and research opportunities
of a top research institution while retaining the effective and personal
training characteristic of a smaller institution. Frequent personal
contact and consultation with advisers are essential for graduate
students, especially in the early stages of research. At Tufts, the size
of the faculty and of the student body is such that graduate students have
little problem conferring with their research advisers in both informal
and formal settings on a regular basis. Tufts provides a lively and
intellectually stimulating environment for both
undergraduate/graduate
students and faculty alike. Highly motivated undergraduates participate in
research projects and offer stimulation and intellectual challenge in
teaching situations. Research in the department
encompasses the many diverse interests of the research faculty and
reflects the interdisciplinary nature of modern chemical research.
While research still draws heavily on the traditional subdisciplines of
organic, inorganic, physical, and analytical chemistry, students at Tufts
receive a broad-based education that is less constrained by traditional
subdisciplinary boundaries.
A number of
current research projects
illustrate the nature of research at Tufts. These include
investigating new classes of fiber optic chemical sensors for use as an
“artificial nose”, the design of “smart” windows capable of changing their transmissivity with the flip of a switch, research
& development of new
field analytical technologies capable of rapid analysis of
pollutants in the environment, and the use of autonomous analytical chemical
laboratories to study in-situ the geochemistry and biological
potential of Mars and extreme environments on Earth. Still other projects focus on uncovering
new strategies for the treatment of diabetes mellitus, developing
compounds which inhibit gene expression at the RNA or DNA level,
understanding the chemistry on a raindrop, synthesizing molecular
tweezers, evaluating the global warming potential of CFC substitutes, and
discovering new strategies for understanding and controlling chemical
reactivity at surfaces. In this age of
interdisciplinary research, the walls of the department have expanded
beyond the Pearson-Michael Chemistry Complex to include collaborative work
with government and industrial scientists as well as with other academic
researchers, both on and off campus. A number of students have
participated in such collaborative research and benefited from the
opportunity. The chemistry department
currently offers a graduate program at the M.S. and Ph.D. level in
organic, inorganic, physical, and analytical chemistry. Active
research groups represent each of the four subdisciplines, and many
projects cross traditional lines. A joint graduate program with the Tufts
University Biotechnology Center offers M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in
Chemistry/Biotechnology for students who wish to apply their chemical
training to emerging areas of biotechnology.
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