Richard S. Stein

University of Massachusetts Amherst

1925 – Present

Physical Chemist

Awarded Bingham Medal 1972

Fellow, Elected 2015

Dr. Richard Stein is an American born physical chemist. He obtained his B.S. in physical chemistry from the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in 1945. He then received his Ph.D, from Princeton University in 1948, studying polymer science under the famed Henry Eyring, Robert Rundle, and Arthur Tobolsky. For one year after receiving his PhD, Stein worked as a National Research Council Fellow at Cambridge University, after which he returned to Princeton in 1949 for a year as a research associate. He then took a position at University of Massachusetts–Amherst, where he remained from 1950-1991, when he retired. During his career at Amherst he started the University’s Polymer Research Institute which evolved into the present day Department of Polymer Science & Engineering.

Richard Stein’s research focused mainly on polymers. In his undergraduate career, he worked under Bruno Zimm and Paul Doty on light scattering due to polymer solutions. In his PhD thesis Stein used utilized birefringence and x-ray diffraction to study the “Relationship Between the Stress and Mechanical Properties of Polymers.” A majority of his later work also utilized these techniques and focused on the application of small-angle light scattering studies to polymers. Specific topics he studied using these techniques include the optical properties and orientation of polymeric solids and thermodynamics and kinetics of phase transitions of polymers. He was awarded the Bingham Medal in 1972, and the von Hippel Award of the Materials Research Society (MRS) in 1999. He is a member of both the National Academies of Science and Engineering.