Talk:Kendall Houk

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Untitled[edit]

Uncommented sections detailing Prof Houk's contributions. It is useful and the community can respond to it- the purpose of Wikipedia. Need references though... I will work on that when I have time again if it is still necessary.

I made some rather large changes to the page to make it look more like a CV with bullet points. I hope this doesn't make it more difficult to manage but I think it improves the readability. This should also avoid some of the copyright concerns.

Added picture of Ken cut from a group picture from 2004. Mcpazzo (talk) 06:34, 29 September 2008 (UTC)Mcpazzo[reply]

I have moved the following from the article to here because it is a direct quote from a copyrighted web page. Specific points should be added back to the article in your own words:

The following biography is from Dr. Houk's website:

"Professor Houk was a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher Scholar and a Fellow of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He received the L.S.U. Distinguished Research Master Award in 1968, the von Humboldt U.S. Senior Scientist Award in 1981, the Akron A.C.S. Section Award in 1984, and an Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award in 1988. He was the 1991 recipient of the ACS James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry and 1998 winner of the Schrödinger Medal of the World Association of Theoretically Oriented Chemists (WATOC). He received the Bruylants Chair from the University of Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium in 1998, and an honorary doctorate (Dr. rer. nat. h. c.) from the University of Essen in Germany in 1999. He has been a Visiting Professor at Princeton University, and has served on the Advisory Boards of the Chemistry Division of the National Science Foundation, the Petroleum Research Fund, a variety of journals, including Accounts of Chemical Research, the Journal of Organic Chemistry, Chemical and Engineering News, and the Journal of Computational Chemistry, and as a member of the NIH Medicinal Chemistry Study Section and the NRC Board of Chemical Sciences and Technology. From 1988-1990, he was Director of the Chemistry Division of the National Science Foundation. He was Chairman of the UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry from 1991-1994. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the WATOC. He was the 2003 Recipient of the ACS Computers in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Research Award. He is the Director of the UCLA Chemistry-Biology Interface Training Program and Chair of the AAAS Chemistry Section.

Professor Houk is an authority on theoretical organic chemistry, and his group is involved in developments of rules to understand reactivity, computer modeling of complex organic reactions, and experimental tests of the predictions of theory. Among current interests are the theoretical investigation of antibody-catalyzed reactions, the quantitative modelling of asymmetric reactions used in synthesis, and the molecular dynamics and reactions of hemicarcerands and other host-guest complexes. He has published over 600 articles in refereed journals and was one of the Top 100 Cited Chemists in the period 1981-1997."

WP articles should use sources but not copy them, even if accredited as this was. --Bduke 11:14, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is by far one of the most scientifically unprofessional articles on Wikipedia I have ever come across. Apart from the section on pericyclic reactions, any statement here is simply wrong. Given that Prof. Houk is a theoretician himself, I am rather convinced he would be completely ashamed of seeing such utter bollocks written about him. If people write about issues that arise in transition state theory, enzymatic catalysis and similar, then those people should really focus on being accurate, while all of this is nothing else than a flowery bouquet without any meaning or reality. In fact, the writer should probably study some sort of science first, or elaborate on seriously and accurately pose the questions Houk was aiming to answer, because not even this has been achieved in this article. To close this I would say it may appear noble for someone to write for free on Wikipedia, but in actual fact this is almost criminal, as you make sooo many stupid undergraduates believe this nonsense and make them fail their exams because of fundamental misunderstandings. I do hope Wikipedia wakes up anytime soon in the future as this nonsense really should be entirely prevented, if Wikipedia wants to be used for scientific matters in the future. As for the experts, I am aware they read the original work! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrcormackjourneyman (talk • contribs) 01:55, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]