Margrave, John L.

John L. Margrave was born April 13, 1924 in Kansas City, Kansas. He served in the U.S. Army’s Signal Corps from 1941 until 1968, on active duty from 1943 through 1946. Margrave earned his B.S. in Engineering Physics in 1948 and his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1950 from the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, where he was a Summerfield Scholar and a Slosson Fellow. He spent twenty months as a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Atomic Energy Commission in the Department of Chemistry at Berkeley from 1951 to 1952. He also was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1960.

Margrave taught Chemistry from 1952 to 1963 at the University of Wisconsin. He began his career at Rice University as a professor of chemistry in 1963. From 1967 through 1972 he was professor and chair of Rice’s department of chemistry, and from 1972 until 1980 as dean of Advanced Studies and Research. In 1980 he was named vice-president of Advanced Studies and Research, a position he held until 1986. That year he was named the E. D. Butcher Professor of Chemistry, a title he kept until his death on December 18, 2003 from complications following heart surgery.

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