Department of Chemistry · Page 17 Recently found in the Seeley-Mudd Building's Physical Chemistry laboratory, this letter documents correspondence between Dr. Jim Sturm and an instrumentation company located in Florida. Although Dr. Sturm did not get this polarimeter repaired in 1965 by Hollywood Instruments, he did deeply enjoy being called "poetical" and providing a fellow technician with a "religious" experience--so much that he kept this letter in his files for more than 50 years. We enjoyed it just as much when it was placed into our department archives -- and so we wanted to share this amazing correspondence with you . 1 9 6 5 James E. Sturm (on the faculty 1956-1995) received his B.A. in Chemistry from St. John’s University [Minnesota] (1951), Ph.D. with Milton Burton from the University of Notre Dame (1957) and did postdoctoral research with John E. Willard at the University of Wisconsin (1956). Retired since 1995, Dr. Sturm still resides in the Lehigh Valley. He was involved in research in chemical kinetics, radiation chemistry, photochemistry, and the collisional efficiencies of reactions of high-velocity atoms. Photochemical means was used to produce relatively high-kinetic energy atoms with sufficient translational energy, initially, to react by otherwise endoergic paths. Computer modeling of photochemical processes by both finite difference and stochastic methods was investigated. Attention was given to diffusion which accompanies nonuniform absorption of light in a reaction system. The sensitivity of computed outcomes to the magnitudes of parameters involved was studied as well. His specialties, developed during graduate and postdoctoral research, led to his offering an elective course in nuclear and radiochemistry. Professor Sturm pioneered the introduction of propagation of errors into the physical chemistry laboratory report that each student would write for every experiment that was done. Not only would an average value of a given result be reported but also the uncertainty in the average. Propagation of errors continues to be an important part of each current student’s physical chemistry laboratory report.
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